I’ve obtained a ton of emails from readers with sturdy opinions about whether or not they’d enable a humanoid robotic of their houses.
For instance, Lisa F. says: “I’ll personal one as quickly as I can!! I’ve present containers to make up and I need assistance.”
However Billy B. is much less enthusiastic concerning the thought. He says: “I’d by no means belief a robotic in my house till the logistics are full the place a robotic may very well be trusted 100% of the time as a human with above common intelligence and thought processes.”
Billy’s feedback tie again to what I consider may very well be the lacking hyperlink that triggers a robotics growth.
The mind.
Extra particularly, a brand new technology of AI fashions that might lastly enable robots to function in messy, unpredictable environments.
That alone is a big improvement.
However what if this breakthrough doesn’t simply change what robots can do?
What if it modifications the place the largest fortunes in robotics get made?
As a result of most traders right this moment are centered on the robots themselves, like Tesla’s Optimus…
Picture: Tesla
Determine’s 03 robotic…
Picture: Determine
And Boston Dynamics’ Atlas.
Picture: Boston Dynamics
However what if the businesses constructing these machines matter lower than those constructing the techniques these machines rely on?
Mind Energy
If the intelligence inside robots finally ends up being a very powerful half, then the largest alternative in robotics may not be within the corporations constructing their our bodies.
It may very well be within the ones constructing their brains.
In case you return to the private pc growth, numerous traders assumed that the massive winners could be the businesses making the machines themselves. And for some time, that seemed like the proper assumption. Firms like Compaq, Dell and Gateway have been huge winners throughout the earlier stage of the growth.
However over time, an infinite quantity of worth concentrated elsewhere.
Particularly, it concentrated in Microsoft.
That’s as a result of Microsoft owned the working system these computer systems ran on.
Home windows.
And as soon as it turned the usual throughout the complete ecosystem, that’s the place a lot of the cash was made.
One thing very comparable occurred with smartphones.
There was fierce competitors amongst {hardware} producers, and loads of corporations made good units. However as that market matured, it turned clear that the businesses controlling the software program ecosystems operating these telephones had a really completely different form of leverage.
Apple and Google didn’t simply take part within the smartphone market.
In some ways, they outlined it.
Picture: Apple
That’s why I hold coming again as to if robotics is establishing in an identical method.
Right here’s my considering.
In keeping with the Worldwide Federation of Robotics, there are actually roughly 4.7 million industrial robots working in factories worldwide.
In 2024 alone, producers put in about 542,000 new robots globally, marking the fourth straight 12 months installations topped half one million.
So widespread automation isn’t some future story. It’s already right here.
However most of these machines are specialists. They’re designed to do slender duties in managed environments like welding, sorting, portray and shifting supplies.
However this new technology of robotic “brains” may very well be what lastly permits robots to maneuver from following directions to reasoning by means of duties.
Imaginative and prescient-language-action fashions are designed to maneuver past mounted automation, giving robots the power to interpret conditions, generalize throughout duties and reply in actual time as a substitute of merely following pre-programmed directions.
That’s an enormous leap.
If these fashions grow to be a regular intelligence layer in robotics — like Home windows turned for private computer systems — then robotics might grow to be extra of a platform story than a {hardware} story.
And that creates a really completely different funding setup.
Traditionally, when expertise markets transfer towards platform fashions, the true cash typically leads to locations traders didn’t anticipate on the outset.
On this case, the businesses supplying the intelligence these robots rely on.
One clue to the place this could be heading is to look the place critical cash is already flowing.
Bodily Intelligence — based by researchers from OpenAI, Google and DeepMind — raised roughly $400 million nearly instantly after launch. The corporate just lately started a brand new funding spherical to lift $1 billion, which might push its valuation to $11 billion.
That’s exceptional for a corporation centered on the brains, not the machines.
Right here’s My Take
Enterprise funding into embodied AI and robotics has surged during the last 18 months.
In 2025, robotics funding totaled almost $14 billion, a 70% improve over 2024.
And numerous capital is chasing what’s occurring underneath the hood.
Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) could be the clearest instance of this. Its Isaac robotics software program stack, Omniverse simulation platform and now GR00T — a generalist humanoid basis mannequin — are all meant to assist construct the infrastructure for clever machines.
To me, they’re an indication that Nvidia is making a platform guess. And the corporate has already hinted on the scale it sees.
On the NVIDIA GTC 2026 convention, Jensen Huang mentioned: “Bodily AI has arrived — each industrial firm will grow to be a robotics firm.”
Huang tasks bodily AI — AI that understands bodily legal guidelines, together with robotics — as a $50 trillion market.
And Morgan Stanley estimates there may very well be one billion humanoids in use by 2050, representing as a lot as $5 trillion in worth.
Even when these estimates show aggressive, they signify an infinite quantity of humanoid robots in our future.
And when thousands and thousands of robots can run on a “common mind”…
Whoever owns it might sit on one of many largest software program alternatives industrial markets have ever produced.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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