🔥Maybe after the AI craze, the next trend will be robotics (not crypto)

Investment in Robotics sets a record $16.3B in Q1 2026, after 4 years of flatness.
This boom comes exactly 2 years after AI LLM models experienced a similar funding boom in 2023-2024.
Why do robots have to wait for AI to go first?
- Robot hardware is not new; Boston Dynamics has been doing it since 1992.
- What has been missing for 30 years, causing slow progress in the robotics industry, is the brain for robots.
-> Jensen Huang calls this the "ChatGPT moment of the robotics industry"; robotics is exactly recreating the AI trend with a 2-year delay.
The AI/chip race has become too crowded, too expensive, with valuations stretched. And the market needs to find another story (to inflate) as the AI story gradually fades.
If robots repeat the pattern of the AI trend with a 2-year delay, we can predict that in the coming time, money will continue to pour into the leading group (Tesla Optimus, Figure AI, Unitree, AgiBot), with valuations being pushed at an unbelievable speed, just like OpenAI and Anthropic have had their valuations changed throughout 2023 until now.
Importantly, currently robotics still does not have any significant revenue, so this comparison is also a personal opinion.