The next AI frontier: robots
Sophisticated AI models have automated many tasks, yet we’re still doing our own dishes and struggling to fold fitted sheets. That might change soon, with humanoids and autonomous robots on the rise.
Robotics has been a promising category for a few years: VC funding for robotics more than tripled between 2023 and 2025, when it reached $40.7 billion annually. But the latest headlines around robotics suggest we might actually be on the cusp of the next AI frontier. Investment in AI robots is surging and manufacturing breakthroughs are unlocking physical AI at scale.
First up, consider the financing signals. Last week, Meta acquired humanoid robotics startup Assured Robot Intelligence, which was building AI models for humanoids to perform physical labor, including household chores. LG’s robo-butler is already doing some of this.
SoftBank also announced a big bet on bots: the conglomerate’s new robotics venture, Roze AI, reportedly aims to use autonomous robots to build data centers. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son sees AI robotics as the “next frontier” for the company. And the venture isn’t a long-horizon moonshot: the Financial Times reported that SoftBank is planning to list Roze as soon as this year, eyeing a $100B valuation.
On the supply chain end, AI robotics startup Figure AI recently reported a breakthrough in one of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks: achieving scale. The company said that it ramped up production of humanoid robots from one per day to one per hour, a 24x throughput improvement in under 120 days, with its high-volume manufacturing facility. "By expanding our fleet, we are generating the data streams required to unlock next-generation autonomous capabilities,” the company said.
The implication: robots are becoming easier to scale and getting smarter.
