By Tae Kim

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The Robots Are Coming. Hi everyone. We all grew up watching science fiction movies with armies of robots doing manual labor inside a factory or fighting on a battlefield. Depending on your perspective, it's either a hellscape or a future free of human suffering.

Either way, that reality in which robots are pervasive in society could be coming faster than most people think, according to two visionary CEOs: Nvidia's Jensen Huang and OpenAI's Sam Altman. It's all a result of recent advances in artificial intelligence.

"Humanoid robotics is going to potentially be one of the largest industries ever," Huang said in Paris on Wednesday.

The CEO has frequently talked about robots as the next big thing and Nvidia has been developing AI foundation models for robotics. "We now know how to build these things, train these things, and operate these things," Huang said.

He believes it is only a matter of time before Nvidia and other companies figure out how to make robots smarter and better able to navigate the physical world through AI model improvements and simulation data.

In an interview last month, Huang predicted a compressed timeline for robotics to really take off: "A couple years from now, I think it's going to happen."

Altman has offered a similar vision. On Tuesday, he said in a blog post that robots that can do "real world" tasks may arrive by 2027. He thinks that after the first million robots, they will eventually be smart enough to build themselves. "Robots that can build other robots (and in some sense, data centers that can build data centers) aren't that far off," he wrote. "The rate of progress will obviously be quite different."

The two CEOs have been prescient about previous technology shifts. Huang has repeatedly positioned Nvidia for the next big idea, from 3-D graphics and parallel computing to deep learning software libraries, laying the groundwork for Nvidia's AI chip dominance. Altman co-founded OpenAI, leading the start-up that sparked the AI boom with ChatGPT, along with the company's market-leading AI technologies.

Once robot technology and economics improve, rapid adoption is a likely conclusion. Compared with humans, robots can survive in more hazardous environments, work 24/7, and carry heavier objects.

Wall Street, for once, may be behind the curve. Earlier this year, Bernstein analyst Jay Huang predicted that annual shipments of humanoid robots may surpass 1 million units between 2030 and 2032, and mainly be used for delivery, material handling, and inside factories.

Put me on the side of Huang and Altman. At Nvidia's GTC conference in March, I saw convincing humanoid robots moving and jumping around with fully articulated limbs and hands. The physical functionality is already here. They just need a smarter brain from AI models.

The robots could be coming in just two years. We should all be prepared.

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Write to Tae Kim at tae.kim@barrons.com or follow him on X at @firstadopter.

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June 12, 2025 03:00 ET (07:00 GMT)

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