Famed roboticist and iRobot founder Rodney Brooks has sounded the alarm on a humanoid robot investment bubble. He\u2019s not the only one.<\/p>\n
In a recent essay<\/a>, Brooks calls out the billions of venture dollars being poured into humanoid robot companies<\/a> like Figure. His take: Despite the amount of money being injected into the industry, humanoids won\u2019t be able to learn dexterity \u2014 or the fine motor movements with hands \u2014 rendering them essentially useless.<\/p>\n His take might surprise some, especially those VCs investing in the sector. But not the multiple robotics-focused VCs<\/a> and AI scientists who have told TechCrunch in recent months that they don\u2019t expect to see wide adoption of humanoid robots for at least a few years \u2014 if not more than a decade.<\/p>\n The issues<\/p>\n Fady Saad, a general partner at robotics-focused VC Cybernetix Ventures and former co-founder of MassRobotics, told TechCrunch that beyond sending humanoids into space in place of human astronauts, he doesn\u2019t see a huge market yet.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who probably haven\u2019t seen humanoids before, or haven\u2019t kind of been closely following what\u2019s happening, they are impressed with what\u2019s happening now in humanoids, but we continue to be a little bit conservative and skeptical about the actual use case and the actual revenues that will be generated,\u201d Saad said.<\/p>\n Saad is also concerned about safety, especially when humans and humanoid robots share the same space. Safety issues could arise from humanoids and humans working closely on a factory floor, or other industrial sites. Saad says those concerns mount when humanoids enter people\u2019s homes \u2014 a goal many humanoid companies are working toward.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this thing falls on pets or kids, it will hurt them,\u201d Saad said. \u201cThis is just one aspect of a big hurdle that no one is paying attention to, or very few people are paying attention to. The other thing is, how many people are comfortable with having a humanoid in their home sitting there? What if it got hacked? What if it went crazy at night and started breaking things?\u201d<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco The timeline for this technology also isn\u2019t clear \u2014 a crucial factor for VCs who have fund lifecycles and timelines to return capital to investors.<\/p>\n The timeline<\/p>\n Sanja Fidler, the vice president of AI research at Nvidia, told TechCrunch in August that while it\u2019s hard to pin the development of humanoids to an exact timeline, she compared the current swell of interest to the excitement in the early days of self-driving cars.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, look at self-driving cars, in 2017 and 2016, I mean it felt tangible, right?\u201d Fidler said at the time. \u201cIt still took them quite a few years to really scale and even now, no one really scaled to the entire world, full autonomy. It\u2019s hard. It\u2019s really hard to go and fully delivery on that technology.\u201d<\/p>\n Nvidia chief scientist Bill Dally agreed in an interview with TechCrunch. Dally and Fidler\u2019s comments are especially notable as Nvidia is also pouring money into developing the infrastructure for humanoid companies to follow.<\/p>\n Seth Winterroth, a partner at Eclipse, said while it can be easy to get excited as each new technological development happens, or the latest demo drops, humanoids are incredibly complicated. He added that it will be a while before they reach their full capabilities.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to do software releases to six degrees of freedom systems; what we\u2019re talking about with some of these humanoids is 60-plus degrees of freedom systems,\u201d Winterroth said, regarding a robot\u2019s ability to move on a 3D axis. \u201cThen you need to be able to have good unit economics around that solution, such that you\u2019ve got strong gross margin, such that you can be building an enduring business. I think we\u2019re pretty early.\u201d<\/p>\n In most cases, humanoid robots aren\u2019t ready for the world yet, either.<\/p>\n Tesla is a great example of the struggles companies are running into. The company announced it was building its humanoid<\/a>, Optimus, back in 2021. The following year, Tesla said the bot would be introduced in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n That didn\u2019t happen. When the bot was introduced in 2024 at Tesla\u2019s \u201cWe, Robot\u201d event, it was revealed later that the bots were largely being controlled by humans<\/a> off scene. The company claims it will start selling the bots in 2026.<\/p>\n Robotics startup Figure, which was valued at $39 billion<\/a> in a September fundraise, has also drawn skepticism regarding how many of its humanoids<\/a> the company has actually deployed, a claim the company staunchly defends.<\/p>\n What is working<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean humanoids won\u2019t have a future market or that the technology is not worth working on.<\/p>\n Brooks himself said he doesn\u2019t doubt that we will have humanoids in the future. But instead of what the market pictures when they hear humanoids, a robot with a human form, he predicts they\u2019ll likely have wheels and other inhuman features and won\u2019t be coming out for more than a decade.<\/p>\n There are startups working on the dexterity technology Brooks is skeptical humanoids will be able to reach, including Y Combinator-backed Proception<\/a> and Loomia<\/a>, which built a kit that can help robotics companies start to incorporate touch into their machines.<\/p>\n There are also numerous humanoid companies that are starting to take orders and gather interest in their robots. K-Scale Labs<\/a> received more than 100 preorders for its humanoid bot in the first five days, surprising even the founders, CEO Benjamin Bolte told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n