Renowned roboticist and iRobot founder Rodney Brooks has warned of an investment bubble in humanoid robots. He’s not the only one.
In a recent essay, Brooks points out that billions of dollars in venture capital are being poured into humanoid robot companies like Figure. His view: Despite all the money being poured into industry, humanoids will be unable to learn manual dexterity, or fine motor movements of the hands, and will become essentially useless.
His views may surprise some, particularly venture capitalists investing in the sector. However, several robotics-focused venture capitalists and AI scientists have told TechCrunch in recent months that they don’t expect humanoid robots to become widely available for at least a few years, or even a decade or more.
Problem
Fady Saad, general partner at robotics-focused VC Cybernetix Ventures and former co-founder of MassRobotics, told TechCrunch that he doesn’t yet see a market bigger than sending humanoids into space to replace human astronauts.
“People who have never seen a humanoid before or looked closely at what’s going on are impressed with what’s happening with humanoids, but we remain somewhat conservative and skeptical about real-world use cases and real-world revenue generation,” Saad said.
Saad is also concerned about safety, especially when humans and humanoid robots share the same space. Safety issues can arise when humanoids and humans work closely together on factory floors and other industrial sites. Saad says these concerns are heightened when humanoids invade people’s homes. Many humanoid companies are working towards this goal.
“If this were to fall on a pet or child, they would be injured,” Saad said. “This is just one aspect of a big hurdle that no one is paying attention to, or that very few people are paying attention to. The other one is how many people are comfortable with having a humanoid sitting in their home. What if it gets hacked? What if it starts going crazy at night and breaking stuff?”
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The timeline for this technology is also unclear. This is an important factor for VCs who have a fund lifecycle and a schedule for returning capital to investors.
timeline
Sanja Fidler, Nvidia’s vice president of AI research, told TechCrunch in August that it’s difficult to put humanoid development on a precise timeline, but likened the current surge of interest to the early excitement around self-driving cars.
“I mean, look at self-driving cars, you really felt that in 2017 and 2016, right?” Fiddler said at the time. “It’s still quite a long time before we can really scale, and no one is able to scale globally to full autonomy right now. It’s hard. It’s really hard to fully deliver that technology.”
Nvidia chief scientist Bill Dally agreed in an interview with TechCrunch. Daly and Fiddler’s comments are particularly noteworthy since Nvidia is also pouring money into developing infrastructure for humanoid companies to follow.
Eclipse partner Seth Winterroth said it’s easy to get excited every time a new technology development happens or the latest demo is released, but humanoids are incredibly complex. He added that it will take some time for them to reach their full potential.
“It’s difficult to release software for a six-degree-of-freedom system. What we’re talking about with some of these humanoids is a system with more than 60 degrees of freedom,” Winterroth said of the robot’s ability to move on 3D axes. “In that case, you need to establish good unit economics around that solution so you can have strong gross margins and build a durable business. I think we’re at a pretty early stage.”
In most cases, humanoid robots are also not ready for the world yet.
Tesla is a great example of the predicament that companies face. The company announced in 2021 that it is developing a humanoid robot called Optimus. The following year, Tesla announced that the bot would be introduced in 2023.
That didn’t happen. When the bot was introduced at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in 2024, it was later revealed that the bot was primarily controlled by humans off-site. The company claims to start selling bots in 2026.
Figure, the robotics startup valued at $39 billion in September funding, has also faced skepticism about how many humanoids it has actually deployed, a claim the company adamantly defends.
what is working
That doesn’t mean there’s no future market for humanoids or that the technology isn’t worth working on.
Brooks himself said he has no doubts that humanoids will exist in the future. But he predicts that the market won’t see humanoids, or human-shaped robots, for more than a decade, not what they think of, and perhaps with wheels or other non-human features.
There are also startups working on sleight of hand technologies that Brooks doubts humanoids can reach. These include Y Combinator-backed Proception and Loomia, which has developed a kit to help robotics companies build touch into their machines.
There are also a number of humanoid companies that are beginning to take orders and gain interest in their robots. K-Scale Labs received more than 100 pre-orders for its humanoid bot in the first five days, surprising even its founder, CEO Benjamin Bolt told TechCrunch.
Hugging Face is also seeing strong demand from developers for two humanoid bots. The company began taking pre-orders for its small desktop version, Reachy Mini, in July. The reaction was obvious. Just five days after starting orders for the Reachy Mini robot, Hugging Face recorded $1 million worth of sales.
