Robot industry split over that humanoid look – Morgan Stanley believes there’s a $4.7 trillion market for humanoids like Tesla’s Optimus over the next 25 years — most of them in industrial settings, but also as companions or housekeepers for the wealthy.
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/27/robots-humanoid-tesla-optimus
17 Comments
From the article
Advanced robots don’t necessarily need to look like C3PO from “Star Wars” or George Jetson’s maid Rosie, despite all the hype over [humanoids](https://www.axios.com/2024/04/10/humanoid-robot-dog-workplace-job-tasks) from Wall Street and Big Tech.
* In fact, some of the biggest skeptics about human-shaped robots come from within the robotics industry itself.
**Why it matters:** Robots are meant to take over dirty, dangerous and dull tasks — not to replace humans, who are still the most sophisticated machines of all.
**The big picture:** Morgan Stanley believes there’s a $4.7 trillion market for humanoids like Tesla’s Optimus over the next 25 years — most of them in industrial settings, but also as companions or housekeepers for the wealthy.
**Yes, but:** The most productive — and profitable — bots are the ones that can do [single tasks cheaply and efficiently](https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/function-over-flash-specialized-robots-attract-billions-with-efficient-task-2025-05-22/?utm_source=chatgpt.com).
* “If you look at where robots are really bringing value in a manufacturing environment, it is combining industrial or collaborative robots with mobility,” ABB managing director Ali Raja tells Axios.
* “I don’t see that there are any real practical applications where humanoids are bringing in a lot of value.”
**What they’re saying:** “The reason we have two legs is because whether Darwin or God or whoever made us, we have to figure out how to traverse an infinite number of things,” like climbing a mountain or riding a bike, explains Michael Cicco, CEO of Fanuc America Corp.
All my Roomba has to do is scoot from one room to the other and it’s the dumbest POS I’ve ever owned. These have a long way to go, and it’s hard to imagine them being affordable for anyone but the richest of the rich. This is a massive what if.
If they really think humaniod robots will perform better than those designed for specific industrial tasks then they’re morons.
Just make them look like furries. Huge untapped market.
humaniod robots have no reason to exists at all. it serve no real purpose other than to act as a spy for military
Humanoid robots have absolutely no future. You don’t want a general purpose robot which can fit anywhere a human can, do any task a human can, navigate anywhere a human can. You want 1000 custom robots, each highly efficient at doing one task. That’s the future, every house has hundreds of custom robots flying, wheeling, leaping around, each doing one task, like laundry, gardening, cleaning, with absolute, maximum efficiency.
And don’t forget rounding up and imprisoning all the jobless poors!
It looks like someone is buying favorable reviews, perhaps to pump valuations.
Because no rational person believes this will actually play out like this. Robots? Yes. These robots? No.
Ah, yes, let a Nazi-sympathizing robot into my house. Sure. What could go wrong?
What I really want to know is what the price range is going to end up being on the domestic model.
There’s a segment of techbros who probably think once we can have sex with robots, people will want robots, so humanoid robots are most logical. Lol
Tech bro entrepreneurs are either painfully pragmatic, or outrageously idealistic.
I don’t want a human robot I want a janky 50s one that makes breakfast and talks like a zylon
I like humanoid robots for the rich. Especially since I know the security track record of my industry. Please, give these 24/7 online machines access to your houses and heavy objects/weapons. Nothing bad will happen. 🙂
Amazon is probably the biggest company doing robotics right imo.
Rather than focusing on humanoid robots which they’ve experimented with previously, they’ve shifted to crane/arm-like designs which mimic a human hand and have touch/force sensors.
The robots should be used to pick crops in the fields where there are no more migrant workers.
Is this the new tech hype bubble being manufactured? Since AI isn’t the newest bestest thing anymore.
The only time you need a humanoid robot, is when you want to replace a human. We don’t *need* a mechanic to be human shaped, they just all are like that. The dumbest thing is when some corpo marketing genius puts a humanoid robot in front of a computer.
And is Optimus the one that was infamously remote controlled during the shirt folding demo? And during the cybernight thing? I would rather trust Boston Dynamics than Tesla Scamware.