Key points
- Goldman Sachs now expects 6.48 million humanoid robots to ship in 2035, worth about $138 billion, up from an earlier 1.38 million units and $38 billion.
- The robots you can buy as stocks are mostly automation suppliers like Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), Teradyne (TER) and Symbotic (SYM), not humanoid makers.
- Figure, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics and China's Unitree are all still private. Agility Robotics is going public through the Churchill Capital XI (CCXI) SPAC.
- The small caps carry the most risk. One peer, Vicarious Surgical (RBOT), fell about 91% in a year and was pushed off the NYSE.
If 2024 and 2025 were about AI that thinks, the next chapter is about AI that moves. The industry calls it physical AI, or embodied AI, and the plain version is this: take the models that power chatbots and put them inside a body, a humanoid robot, a warehouse machine, a surgical arm. Every large technology company is now spending on it. Here is what each one is building, and which robot stocks are actually listed.
All prices below are as of September 1, 2026.
Why robotics is called the next AI trade
Goldman Sachs raised its humanoid forecast by about five times in its Global Physical AI report, published in August 2026. The bank now expects 6.48 million units to ship in 2035, worth some $138 billion. Its previous estimate, from February 2024, was 1.38 million units and a $38 billion market. Nearer term, Goldman expects 75,000 humanoids to ship in 2026 and 890,000 in 2030, against a previous 2030 estimate of 250,000.
The revision is about price, not capability. Goldman expects the average selling price of a humanoid to fall from $41,800 in 2025 to $21,300 by 2035. On its worked example, a $30,000 robot plus 50% for system integration replaces 0.8 of a full-time worker and pays for itself in 1.6 years. We covered the full revision and the Amazon savings estimate behind it when the report landed.
Nvidia (NVDA) chief executive Jensen Huang calls robotics the company's second-largest opportunity after AI and has floated a $40 trillion total market for humanoids and labor automation. Long-range Wall Street numbers disagree wildly, which is itself a signal of how early this is. Morgan Stanley sees some $5 trillion by 2050 with 63 million robots in use. Citi goes to about $7 trillion.
Governments are now in it too. China aimed a state venture fund of about $137 billion at AI, robotics and advanced manufacturing, and Beijing added more than $20 billion in subsidies in six months. We wrote about how that compares with Korea's budget and the absence of a US robotics strategy.
The Mag 7 are already all in
Every one of the Magnificent Seven has a robotics program, and they split into two camps: the ones building robots and the ones building the brains.
Tesla (TSLA), at $356.73, is the most aggressive. It stopped making the Model S and Model X in 2026 and is converting its Fremont, California car factory to build its Optimus humanoid, with a long-term goal of up to a million robots a year. Nvidia (NVDA), at $219.37, is the brains, selling the chips and the Isaac and GR00T software platforms that run a large share of the world's robots, which is why it wins regardless of whose robot succeeds.
Amazon (AMZN) is the biggest real-world user, with more than a million robots across over 300 facilities as of June 2025, and it backs Agility Robotics. Alphabet (GOOGL) builds robot AI through Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics models and has partnered with humanoid startup Apptronik. Microsoft (MSFT) is an early backer of Figure AI, which reached a $39 billion valuation in 2025. Meta (META) set up a robotics group inside Reality Labs and is testing robots from Kinova, ABB and Watney Robotics to swap cables and reset servers in its Iowa and Ohio data centers, which we covered after Wired reported it. Apple (AAPL) is the outlier, reported to be working on a tabletop home robot rather than a humanoid.
The robot stocks you can actually buy today
Here is the catch. The famous humanoids aren't stocks. What is listed today is mostly the established, profitable automation suppliers that make the arms, sensors and systems the whole field runs on.
| Company | What it makes | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) | Surgical robots, over 8,000 da Vinci systems installed | $366.79 |
| Rockwell Automation (ROK) | Factory automation control systems | $417.19 |
| Zebra Technologies (ZBRA) | Warehouse scanning and tracking | $345.62 |
| Teradyne (TER) | Owns Universal Robots and MiR, factory cobots | $331.63 |
| Cognex (CGNX) | Machine vision, the eyes most robots use | $59.08 |
| Symbotic (SYM) | AI warehouse automation, backed by Walmart | $38.24 |
The small caps are where both the upside and the risk sit. These are small, mostly unprofitable companies that can double or halve on one headline. The cautionary tale sits inside the group: Vicarious Surgical (RBOT) fell about 91% in a year and was pushed off the NYSE to the over-the-counter market.
| Company | What it makes | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Ouster (OUST) | Lidar sensors, the laser eyes robots use | $33.25 |
| Palladyne AI (PDYN) | Autonomy software for robots and drones | $5.42 |
| Serve Robotics (SERV) | Nvidia-backed sidewalk delivery robots for Uber Eats | $4.67 |
| Kraken Robotics (KRKNF) | Canadian underwater robots | $3.67 |
| Richtech Robotics (RR) | Service robots and its own humanoid, Dex | $1.81 |
| Microbot Medical (MBOT) | Surgical micro-robotics | $1.48 |
| Nauticus Robotics (KITT) | Subsea autonomous vehicles | $0.81 |
Serve Robotics is a live example of why size matters here. Its chief executive, chief operating officer and chief financial officer all filed Form 4s covering sales between August 17 and 19, about 124,000 shares for $585,000 combined, and only about half of that was tied to mandatory tax withholding.
The best names are still private, but doors are opening
The robots drawing the headlines, Figure, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics and China's Unitree, are mostly still private. That's starting to change in two places.
Peggy Johnson, chief executive of Agility Robotics, told investors on the company's June call that "This is no longer a vision of the future," and that "Humanoid robots are already performing useful work today." Agility reports more than $300 million of multi-year orders for its Digit robot, though those orders are "subject to the realization of certain contractual milestones."
Agility Robotics, the Amazon-backed maker of the Digit humanoid, is going public through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI (CCXI), which trades at $13.15 against the $10 a share Foxconn and Agility's existing backers are paying to take it public as AGLT. Michael Klein, Churchill's chairman and chief executive, called Agility "a humanoid first mover with proven technology, real-world deployments, and the trust of some of the world's most demanding enterprises" in the announcement. Nobody outside the deal has seen full financials. We went through what the filings do and don't show, and later weighed it against Tesla, Nvidia and Teradyne after Unitree's Chinese IPO was oversubscribed 8,288 times.
RoboStrategy (BOT), at $25.64, is a fund built to hold a basket of private and pre-IPO robotics companies, listing Figure and Apptronik among its targets, so one ticker buys a slice of names that are otherwise closed. Hong Kong-listed UBTech (UBTRF) is the other humanoid pure-play reachable from a US brokerage, and it trades over the counter.
Policy is now a live variable for this group. The FCC moved on July 28 to bar new Chinese humanoid and quadruped robots from the US market, and the small caps did the moving on the day: RoboStrategy closed up 17.6% while the humanoid ETF (KOID) fell. IEEE Spectrum described the bind the industry is in: "The U.S. robotics industry is in a pickle: Companies would benefit from eliminating Chinese competitors at their level of the value chain, so long as they can retain their Chinese suppliers."
Physical AI is a real shift rather than a slogan, and it's earlier than the AI software boom was when that started. The purest bets are either private or small and speculative, and the listed names that are profitable today sell picks and shovels rather than humanoids. For how this connects to the rest of the AI trade, see our AI stock map.
Nothing here is investment advice. Prices are as of September 1, 2026 and change every day. Small-cap robot stocks are especially volatile and can move double digits in a session. Do your own research.
Tesla has since moved on the hardware. It reportedly ordered parts for 5,000 Optimus robots, a year after shelving a 5,000-robot plan.
Cover: AIStockWire illustration.
This is general market commentary and opinion, not investment advice. Markets can go down as well as up, and you can lose money. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decision.
