Two humanoid robots are on display at the China Mobile booth at the Mobile World Conference in Shanghai on June 19, 2025.
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Humanoid robots, which have made significant technological advances this year, may be at the precipice of a ChatGPT-like spike in investment and popularity — or at least, that’s what many in the industry believe.
So-called humanoid robots are artificial intelligence-powered machines designed to resemble humans in appearance and movement, with expected use cases across the industrial and service sectors.
Makers of these robots have been working on the technology in the background for years. Now, they say they’re ready to unleash the technology into the world.
“There is a consensus in our industry that the ChatGPT moment for humanoid robots has arrived,” Xiong Youjun, general manager at the Beijing Innovation Center for Humanoid Robotics, said during a panel in Singapore on Thursday, alongside other professionals from China’s robotics industry.
“This year has been defined as the first year of mass production of humanoid robots,” Xiong, chief technology officer and executive director of robotics firm UBTech, said in Mandarin translated by CNBC. He added that there had been rapid progress in both the mechanical bodies and the AI-powered “brains.”
The original “ChatGPT moment” occurred in late 2022, when OpenAI released its groundbreaking generative AI chatbot to the public, leading to mass adoption of large language models and widespread recognition of their potential.
Tesla’s Optimus robot gestures at an unveiling event in Los Angeles, Oct. 10, 2024.
Tesla | Via Reuters
Robotics players hoping to recreate that impact include Tesla’s Optimus. Meanwhile, a growing number of humanoid robot start-ups are emerging in China, with companies like Unitree, Galbot, Agibot and UBtech Robotics bringing products to market.
While humanoid robots are yet to reach a fraction of the adoption seen with generative AI, many experts do expect the technology to have a transformative impact on the global economy in a matter of years.
Meanwhile, robots have begun to appear everywhere, from factories to technology conferences and sporting events.
Humanoids pick up steam
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he expects the company to produce 5,000 of its Optimus robots this year, with the technology expected to eventually make up the majority of the EV maker’s business.
Meanwhile, humanoid robot firms in China say their products are already being used in factories and for commercial services.
Speaking on Thursday, Zhao Yuli, chief strategy officer at Galbot, said the start-up had already deployed almost 1,000 robots across different businesses.
Other companies, such as UBTech Robotics and Galbot, have also installed robots in local factories, according to local media reports.
According to Zhao, these deployments have come alongside a surge of investor interest and government support in the sector, as well as the maturation of both robotics and generative AI technology.
Industry experts noted that this maturation in technology has been on display at a number of conferences and events this year, such as China’s World Humanoid Robotics Game, which sees robots compete in practical scenarios.
Galbot won a gold medal in the Robot Skills event after placing first in a pharmaceutical sorting challenge.
Improvements in Chinese humanoid robots’ motion control have also been on display in recent months at sporting events such as marathons and boxing matches.
Guo Yandong, founder and CEO of AI² Robotics, added that improvements in generative AI have also enabled robots to learn on the job rather than rely solely on preset commands, a shift that could expand the uses of humanoids across sectors.
Not so fast
Despite the hype from humanoid robotics companies, however, many experts resist the idea that mass public adoption will occur anytime soon.
“Humanoids won’t arrive all at once in a ChatGPT moment, but slowly enter more and more positions as their capabilities increase,” said Reyk Knuhtsen, analyst at SemiAnalysis, an independent research and analysis company specializing in semiconductors and AI. He added that their first uses will be in low-stakes, failure-tolerant tasks.
That’s not to mention long manufacturing timelines and high costs, which will also slow adoption compared to generative AI, he added.
UBTech humanoid robot is on display during the 27th China Beijing International High-tech Expo at China National Convention Center on May 8, 2025 in Beijing, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Even UBTech’s Xiong conceded that some hurdles remain for the sector, such as ethical considerations, laws and regulations that need to be addressed.
Still, analyst Knuhtsen expects investment in the space to continue as long as the autonomy of the robots continues to improve.
“The market opportunity for humanoids is enormous, contingent on how well the AI performs … If the technology works, it has the chance to transform many labor processes around the world,” he said.
Merrill Lynch analysts recently estimated in a research note that global humanoid robot shipments will reach 18,000 units in 2025 from 2,500 units last year. It also predicts a global robot “population” of 3 billion by 2060.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Tesla’s shares have finally turned positive for the year.
After a dismal first quarter, which was the worst for the stock in any period since 2022, and a brutal start to April, following President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping new tariffs, Wall Street has again rallied around the electric vehicle maker.
The stock rose 3.6% on Monday to $410.26, topping its closing price of 2024 by over $6. It’s up 85% since bottoming for the year at $221.86 on April 4. A new filing revealed that CEO Elon Musk purchased about $1 billion worth of shares in the company through his family foundation.
It’s the second straight year Tesla has bounced back after a down first quarter. Last year, the shares fell 29% in the first three months before ending up 63% for 2024.
In recent weeks, analysts have praised the EV maker’s proposed pay plan for Musk, which could amount to a $1 trillion windfall for the world’s richest person over the next decade. The company has also gotten a boost from its new MegaBlocks battery energy storage systems that Tesla ships preassembled to businesses looking to lower their power costs or make greater use of electricity from renewable resources.
Even with the rebound, Tesla is the second-worst performer this year among tech’s megacaps, ahead of only Apple, which is down about 5% in 2025. Tesla is still in the midst of a multi-quarter sales slump due to an aging lineup of EVs and increased competition from lower-cost competitors in China, namely BYD.
Tesla has seen a consumer backlash, in part because of Musk’s political activities, including spending nearly $300 million to propel President Trump back to the White House and his work with the Trump administration to slash the federal workforce.
Tesla leadership has been working to shift investors’ attention to other topics such as robotaxis and humanoid robots.
However, the company has yet to deliver vehicles that are safe to use without a human onboard and ready to take control if needed. And while Musk is touting Tesla’s Optimus robots, which he says will be able to do everything from factory work to babysitting, a product is still a long way from hitting the market.
Shares of the search giant jumped more than 4% on Monday, pushing the company into territory occupied only by Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple.
The stock got a big lift in early September from an antitrust ruling by a judge, whose penalties came in lighter than shareholders feared. The U.S. Department of Justice wanted Google to be forced to divest its Chrome browser, and last year a district court ruled that the company held an illegal monopoly in search and related advertising.
But Judge Amit Mehta decided against the most severe consequences proposed by the DOJ, which sent shares soaring to a record. After the big rally, President Donald Trump congratulated the company and called it “a very good day.”
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Alphabet shares are now up more than 30% this year, compared to the 15% gain for the Nasdaq.
The $3 trillion milestone comes roughly 20 years after Google’s IPO and a little more than 10 years after the creation of Alphabet as a holding company, with Google its prime subsidiary.
CEO Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Alphabet in 2019, replacing co-founder Larry Page. Pichai’s latest challenge has been the surge of new competition due to the rise of artificial intelligence, which the company has had to manage through while also fending off an aggressive set of regulators in the U.S. and Europe.
The rise of Perplexity and OpenAI ended up helping Google land the recent favorable antitrust ruling. The company’s hopes of becoming a major AI player largely ride with Gemini, Google’s flagship suite of AI models.
The U.S. and China have reached a ‘framework’ deal for social media platform TikTok, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday.
“It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon,” he said from U.S.-China talks in Madrid.
Both President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Friday to discuss the terms. Trump also said in a Truth Social post Monday that a deal was reached “on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save.”
Bessent indicated that the framework could pivot the platform to U.S.-controlled ownership.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The comments came during the latest round of trade discussions between the U.S. and China. Relations have soured between the two countries in recent months from Trump’s tariffs and other trade restrictions.
At the same time, TikTok parent company ByteDance faces a Sept. 17 deadline to divest the platform’s U.S. business or face being shut down in the country.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Monday that the deadline may need to be pushed back to get the deal signed, but there won’t be ongoing extensions.
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Congress passed a law last year prohibiting app store operators like Apple and Google from distributing TikTok in the U.S. due to its “foreign adversary-controlled application” status.
But Trump postponed the shutdown in January, signing an executive order in January that gave ByteDance 75 more days to make a deal. Further extensions came by way of executive orders in April and in June.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnicksaid in July that TikTok would shutter for Americans if China doesn’t give the U.S. more autonomy over the popular short-form video app.
As for who controls the platform, Trump told Fox News in June that he had a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy the app and could reveal their identities in two weeks. The reveal never came.
He has previously said he’d be open to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison or Tesla CEO Elon Musk buying TikTok in the U.S. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has submitted a bid for an acquisition, as has businessman Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty internet advocacy group, CNBC reported in January.
Trump told CNBC in an interview last year that he believed the platform was a national security threat, although the White House started a TikTok account in August.