Humanoid robots confuse investors amid growing skepticism

Published: 2026-07-08T09:50:33.000Z

Few corners of technology are sending investors as many mixed signals as humanoid robots, where dazzling demonstrations and trillion-dollar forecasts sit uneasily beside mounting doubt about whether any of it pays off soon. The money keeps flowing, with the Shenzhen firm AI2 Robotics recently raising around 735 million dollars at a valuation near three billion, Apptronik closing a 935 million dollar round at more than 5.5 billion, and Figure AI having self-reported a staggering 39 billion dollar valuation. Yet the louder the funding gets, the more sceptics warn that the sector has the hallmarks of a bubble, and the harder it becomes for anyone to tell a genuine leader from a well-marketed prototype. The confusion is sharpened by how wildly these valuations diverge for companies at similar stages. That inconsistency has just met its first real test, as Agility Robotics prepares to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition vehicle at a comparatively modest 2.5 billion dollars. Its listing matters because it offers the first proper price discovery in a field where most players guard both their finances and the true state of their technology, and its chief executive Peggy Johnson has been strikingly restrained, refusing to promise robots in people's homes any time soon. Set against Figure's self-declared figure, Agility's caution throws the froth elsewhere into stark relief. The doubters have credible voices. Rodney Brooks, the roboticist behind the Roomba, has dismissed much of the spending as wasted on machines that still cannot walk or grip reliably enough for real work, predicting a wave of hype followed by disappointment. A Lithuanian venture capitalist has warned openly that the surge resembles the next financial bubble and urged investors to back economics over excitement. Even Morgan Stanley, broadly bullish on a market it thinks could reach five trillion dollars by 2050, cautions clients not to confuse a robot that can dance with one that can do useful work at scale. Persistent problems with battery life, dexterity, cost and even cybersecurity keep the gap between promise and delivery uncomfortably wide, while Chinese officials have flagged overheating among the country's 150-plus competing firms. The Gulf watches this with its own stake and its own wrinkle. Regional sovereign money is exposed to the boom indirectly through vehicles like SoftBank's Vision Fund, whose founder sees robotics as the source of the next trillion-dollar company, and cheap Chinese humanoids are already being sold into the UAE. But the labor thesis that drives Western and East Asian enthusiasm, namely shrinking populations and worker shortages, fits the Gulf awkwardly, since its economies lean on imported labor rather than facing a demographic cliff. For investors in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, that makes the same question even trickier, and the same skepticism harder to resolve.