In 2018, a simulated humanoid learned to do a backflip by watching a motion capture clip. In 2025, the same lineage of research produced a single model that controls a real Unitree G1 robot with zero task-specific training. The path from one to the other redefines what ’learning to move’ means for robots, virtual humans, and the film industry.
Cathie Wood sees a golden age. Ray Dalio sees a bubble. BlackRock is quietly tokenizing everything. Meanwhile, robots just started clocking in at BMW. Three industries are merging into one economic stack, and no one agrees on what happens next. This is an attempt to make sense of it.
Jensen Huang calls it the ChatGPT moment for robotics. Boston Dynamics just started shipping Atlas to Hyundai. A Chinese startup sells humanoid robots for less than a used Honda Civic. Physical AI, the idea that machines can perceive, reason about, and act in the real world, went from conference slide to factory floor in under two years. Here is what that actually means.
Humanoid robots work for 40 cents an hour. Exoskeletons cost $5,000 and save $7,000 per worker per year. One replaces humans. The other makes them stronger. Both are growing at 30%+ annually. They are not competing. They are carving up different pieces of the same problem.