{"id":54125,"date":"2025-12-23T13:26:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/?p=54125"},"modified":"2025-12-23T13:26:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:26:32","slug":"investors-warn-ai-hype-is-fueling-a-bubble-in-humanoid-robotics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/2025\/12\/23\/investors-warn-ai-hype-is-fueling-a-bubble-in-humanoid-robotics\/","title":{"rendered":"Investors warn AI hype is fueling a bubble in humanoid robotics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Investors say rising enthusiasm for AI-powered humanoid robots is creating speculative risks as high costs, reliability issues and a lack of commercial evidence threaten the sector\u2019s long-term viability.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many humanoid robotics companies backed by investors face fundamental challenges with cost and reliability that will not be solved any time soon, a report by CB Insights shows. According to investors, VCs especially now should embrace a revenue-first philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recent major venture capital reports from KPMG and PitchBook confirm that AI remains in the lead, accounting for more than half of all investments this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Data from CB Insights shows that investors\u2019 attention inside the AI market is shifting rapidly toward industrial humanoid robotics. As a result, investors argue the flood of AI capital is pushing robotics toward a speculative zone, with too many start-ups promising breakthroughs without commercial evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last quarter, industrial humanoid robotics captured 17 deals \u2013 the most of any category. AI was still the primary destination for investors, split into several categories such as coding AI agents and copilots (14 deals), end-to-end software development AI agents (12) and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rapid growth of the sector has already sparked fears of a bubble from the Chinese leading economic planning industry, which said that the humanoid robotics industry needs to \u201cbalance the speed against the risks of bubbles,\u201d Bloomberg reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Investors&#8217; appetite for humanoid robots is largely driven by AI because AI gives humanoids a commercial potential that was previously not possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Daiva Rakauskait\u0117, Partner and Manager of Aneli Capital, a company that manages a \u20ac35 million fund for early-stage Central and Eastern European start-ups, there are strong similarities between today\u2019s AI-driven investment boom and the dotcom bubble in the early 2000s, leaving many start-ups exposed. She expects an AI bubble burst in 2\u20133 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMany AI start-ups that can\u2019t yet generate revenue will fail, but we\u2019re reaching a consensus on that in the market. While the same risks persist in humanoid robotics, many investors tend to overlook this,\u201d said Rakauskait\u0117.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHowever, it is important to distinguish robotics from humanoid robotics; industrial and logistics robots already generate revenue and can deliver measurable results, while humanoids can\u2019t yet prove their commercial value.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently, companies around the world demonstrate prototypes of robots performing actions from running to boxing, sparking interest from users and investors. However, in the real world, they have few practical commercial applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Similar challenges also persist for industrial humanoid robotics. These companies face challenges with inference (ability to make decisions in real time), dexterity (how well the robot can physically handle things), reliability and cost, which limit the initial use cases to factories and warehouses with predictable sets of tasks, the CB Insights report claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Rakauskait\u0117, especially now when investments are driven by hype, VCs should not forget the fundamentals and prioritize a revenue-first philosophy &#8211; where real money matters more than growth at all costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cInvestments in robotics and AI are crucial for the future development of humanity. But investors should remain disciplined and back companies that have realistic goals based on economics, not hype. From day one, start-ups should aim for early revenue streams through licensing, partnerships and have a clear model of monetization in the near future. The same revenue-first philosophy can be applied to any field,\u201d Rakauskait\u0117 said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite early signs of a bubble in humanoid robotics, she remains confident in the broader robotics sector, where cheaper hardware and rapid advances in AI are accelerating real-world deployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Rakauskait\u0117, robotics is an especially promising field for CEE start-ups. The region is located close to Germany, the largest industrial robotics market in Europe, which provides a major strategic advantage to scaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe region also has lots of hidden talent. That\u2019s why we dedicated our new fund for this region, aiming to support the talented founders with hands-on guidance and quick decision-making. Many hype-driven investors pull back once the hype fades. Yet to create real innovators, VCs must support them through their full journey. That\u2019s exactly what we are going to do,\u201d Rakauskait\u0117 said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Investors say rising enthusiasm for AI-powered humanoid robots is creating speculative risks as high costs, reliability issues and a lack of commercial evidence threaten the sector\u2019s long-term viability. Many humanoid robotics companies backed by investors face fundamental challenges with cost and reliability that will not be solved any time soon, a report by CB Insights [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":54129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7027,44],"tags":[10592,10317,10593,10594,10595,10596,10597,9230,9314],"class_list":["post-54125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-intelligent-technologies-ai","category-top-stories","tag-ai-hype","tag-ai-investment","tag-aneli-capital","tag-cb-insights","tag-humanoid-robotics","tag-industrial-robotics","tag-robotics-start-ups","tag-technology-investment-2","tag-venture-capital"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54127,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54125\/revisions\/54127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/apac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}