Embodied Daily · June 25: Unitree G1 Named in U.S. Proposal, 1X Accelerates Opening of NEO

💡 Today's briefing: Humanoid robots hit two walls on the same day—one geopolitical, as a new security review proposal could change how overseas robots enter the North American market, prompting 1X to speed up developer access to NEO; and one capital-related, as Agility uses a SPAC to put its valuation at $2.5 billion. Supply rights and pricing power are both being reshuffled today.

On June 3, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party proposed the GUARD Act, which would add foreign robots deemed to pose security risks to the FCC restricted list and ban their import[1], specifically naming the Unitree G1, which is sold on Amazon at $17,990. The bill also includes a fallback clause under which items not reviewed within one year would automatically be added to the list, effectively defaulting to a strict approach.

Then, on June 24, 1X CEO Bernt Børnich publicly stated that the company would accelerate delivery of NEO to developers. The rationale was straightforward: if some overseas robot products are indeed shut out, Western laboratories would be the first to run out of usable hardware, so rather than wait passively for a ban to take effect, it is better to roll out the development platform now. A proposal that has not yet taken effect has already changed manufacturers' shipping cadence.

The real significance of this matter is that it turns "who supplies embodied research" from a commercial question into a geopolitical one. By pushing the G1 below $20,000 and distributing it through Amazon, Unitree has already made "a humanoid development machine anyone can order" an established fact, and the GUARD Act seeks to dismantle precisely this. But the proposal is, after all, not yet law, and there are currently no answers on how the FCC list would be implemented or whether it would inadvertently harm research procurement—what is worth watching is whether it can actually complete the legislative process.

On June 24, Agility Robotics announced that it would enter the public market through a SPAC merger with Churchill Capital XI, valuing the transaction at about $2.5 billion[2], with the combined company to trade under the ticker AGLT and expected to raise more than $600 million in total proceeds—including $420 million from the SPAC trust and more than $200 million from a PIPE led by Foxconn.