MW 300 million humanoid robots are coming - and here are the companies that will benefit

By Steve Goldstein

A new report estimates there will be 2 million humanoid robots at work in a decade and 300 million by 2050, helping alleviate labor shortages.

A 142-page report from UBS featuring the work of more than 30 analysts, but led out of China, concludes the total addressable market for these robots will reach between $30 billion and $50 billion by 2035 and from $1.4 trillion to $1.7 trillion by 2050, for spending on components, manufacturing, software, data and services.

"Aging populations, labor shortages and low productivity gains in service sectors all support the use case for robots. Having human form offers the added benefit of adaptability into everyday life," says the analysts led by Phyllis Wang, who covers industrial companies in China for the Swiss bank.

Granted, this will take time. UBS said it may take more than five years for humanoid's "EV moment," which is when electric-vehicle volumes increased from 1 million units to 10 million units over a five-year period.

"As futurologist Roy Amara has stated, people tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies while underestimating their long-term effects. We identify a few hurdles that need to be overcome before humanoids scale up, namely AI, dataset collection and regulations," they say.

Selling prices and usage costs may fall by more than 70% over the next 20-plus years owing to better economies of scale and supply-chain improvements.

Global automation, auto parts, semiconductor, battery companies and rare-earth refiners all are set to benefit, with UBS naming companies including NVIDIA $(NVDA)$, Tuopu (CN:601689), Sanhua (CN:002050), Lynas Corporation (AU:LYC), THK (JP:6481), Honeywell $(HON)$, TSMC $(TSM)$, Will Semi (CN:603501), Cognex $(CGNX)$, Amphenol $(APH)$ and Inovance (CN:300124).

Tesla $(TSLA)$, which is not buy rated at UBS, also is well positioned, the firm said.

Its estimate of 86 million humanoid robots in 2050 equates to an additional $400 billion of global automation revenue and $7 billion of rare-earth revenue, which is four and two times their respective sales for 2025.

The economic benefits of these robots will not be productivity gains but making up for demographic constraints.

"We think they represent a slow-moving but increasingly plausible capital response to structural bottlenecks, particularly in services that matter most for aging societies," they said.

-Steve Goldstein

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June 18, 2025 05:15 ET (09:15 GMT)

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