American humanoid robot startup: Even we think the outside world is hyping us too much.

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Despite billions of dollars rapidly flowing into the humanoid robot track, executives at startups in the eye of the storm have rarely spoken out collectively, attempting to cool down the overheated market expectations.

According to a Wall Street Journal report on December 25, at the Humanoids Summit held in Mountain View, California, founders and executives of several humanoid robot startups expressed concerns about the current state of the industry.

They pointed out that although there have been recent technological advances, the hype around humanoid robots has deviated from reality. Moving from scientific experiments to commercializing robots as human worker substitutes still faces huge technical challenges.

Pras Velagapudi, CTO of Agility Robotics, stated that building a robot is one thing, but making a robot capable of doing "useful work" is an entirely different matter.

Although the company's Digit robot has already carried out handling tests in warehouses for clients such as Amazon, he emphasizes that current robots lack sufficient reliability to perform complex tasks, and producing a "robot butler" is far beyond the industry's present capabilities.

This sober perspective from inside the industry stands in stark contrast to the feverish capital market. Ani Kelkar, a McKinsey partner, pointed out that about $5 billion in investment has poured into the field of humanoid robots this year.

However, Kaan Dogrusoz, CEO of Weave Robotics, bluntly stated that although a lot of top talent is devoted to the sector, these robots are “not yet well-defined products.”

He compares the current stage to Apple’s Newton PDA launched in the 90s—correct concept but immature technology, ultimately leading to commercial failure. He believes, “Fully bipedal humanoid robots are the Newton of our era.”

Deployment costs and safety risks

For investors, beyond technology maturity, cost-effectiveness is a more practical consideration. Kelkar from McKinsey pointed out that installation cost is the primary reason enterprises shy away from deploying robots. Surveys show that for every $100 spent by enterprises on deploying robots, only about $20 is used to purchase the robots themselves, while the remaining $80 must be spent on equipment and systems that protect humans from harm.

In theory, lightweight humanoid robots (such as Tesla’s Optimus or Unitree’s G1) require less protective measures than heavy industrial robotic arms, but Kelkar believes there is a huge gap between watching demonstration videos of robots folding clothes and expecting them to become all-purpose butlers.

The battle between form and efficiency

The market generally considers humanoid shape to be the ultimate form of robots, but the engineering community is skeptical. Max Goncharov, CTO of RemBrain, pointed out that the industry may be overly fixated on the “humanoid” form. In factory settings, the core pursuit is efficiency, which means more specialized robots may have greater advantages.

Some engineers believe that imitating the human form has shortcomings such as instability of center of gravity and difficulty replicating tactile feedback in mechanical hands. The future direction may not be to copy humans, but to surpass human form—for example, using four arms or suction cup grippers. Goncharov predicts that humanoid robots may only perform a very small portion of tasks in factories in the future.

Despite Elon Musk’s prediction that annual production of Tesla’s Optimus robot will reach one million units, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s belief that technological breakthroughs are “just around the corner,” frontline startups are clearly more cautious. Nicolaus Radford, CEO of Persona AI, called on the industry at the summit to take responsibility for adoption timelines and avoid over-promising.

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