In little more than half a century, the humanoid robot has travelled from a university laboratory curiosity to one of the most heavily funded frontiers in technology. What was once the stuff of science fiction is now a global race involving carmakers, chip giants, e-commerce empires and a fast-growing field of well-capitalised startups. This is the story of how humanoids evolved, the money now pouring in, the companies being founded, and how large the market could ultimately become.
From Da Vinci's automaton to the first walking robots
The dream of a machine in human form is centuries old — Leonardo da Vinci sketched a mechanical knight as early as 1495. But the modern era began in 1972, when researchers at Japan's Waseda University unveiled WABOT-1, widely regarded as the world's first full-scale humanoid robot. It could walk on two legs, grip objects, measure distances with artificial senses and even communicate in Japanese, however crudely.
Honda, ASIMO and the rise of the bipedal machine
The next leap came from Honda. After quietly building a series of experimental prototypes (E0 through E6), the company revealed P2 in 1996 — the first self-contained bipedal humanoid that could walk and climb stairs untethered. That work culminated in ASIMO in 2000, the most advanced humanoid of its generation, able to walk, recognise faces and respond to voice commands. ASIMO became the public face of humanoid robotics for two decades before Honda retired it in 2022. In parallel, Boston Dynamics introduced its DARPA-backed Atlas in 2013, pushing the boundaries of dynamic balance and mobility; in 2024 the company retired the hydraulic Atlas and revealed an all-electric successor built for real work.
The modern inflection point
The 2020s turned a slow research march into a sprint. Tesla announced its Optimus project in 2021 and has since iterated through multiple generations, while a new generation of specialists — Figure, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, 1X, Sanctuary AI and China's Unitree and AgiBot — moved humanoids out of demos and onto factory floors. The shift is no longer theoretical: as covered in our report on humanoid robot mass production, manufacturers are now committing to fleets, with deals such as Hyundai planning to deploy tens of thousands of Atlas robots and Japan Airlines putting humanoids to work at Haneda Airport.
A funding explosion
The capital behind this surge is staggering. According to Crunchbase, robotics startups raised roughly $7.2 billion in 2024, headlined by Figure's $675 million Series B and a $400 million round for robot-brain developer Physical Intelligence at a $2 billion valuation. Then 2025 redefined the ceiling: Figure raised more than $1 billion in a Series C at a reported $39 billion post-money valuation, Physical Intelligence added a €570 million round at a €5.3 billion valuation, and Apptronik's Series A swelled past $935 million at a $5.5 billion valuation. By several tallies, humanoid-robot startups attracted more capital in 2025 than in the years 2018 through 2024 combined — and broader robotics and "physical AI" investment ran into the tens of billions, supercharged by state backing such as China's reported $138 billion guidance fund. Even as money flowed in, hardware costs fell sharply, with average humanoid prices dropping from around $85,000 in 2023 to roughly $25,000 in 2025, a trend underscored by Unitree's landmark IPO.
A wave of new companies
The boom is visible in company formation. By one industry count, 15 humanoid-robot startups were founded in 2025 — the most of any year in the past decade — capping several years of accelerating new entrants. The map is increasingly bipolar: the United States and China lead the world in the number of humanoid startups (roughly two dozen each), with India, South Korea, Japan and parts of Europe forming a second tier. Morgan Stanley's "Humanoid 100" — its map of the value chain — placed 35 companies in China, 35 in the US and Canada, 18 elsewhere in Asia-Pacific and 12 across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, splitting them into the "brain" (AI and semiconductors), the "body" (actuators, sensors and batteries) and the integrators that assemble complete robots. China accounts for the majority of the hardware-focused "body" suppliers, a position reflected in moves like China's push toward the first household humanoid robot. (Exact company tallies vary by source and methodology.)
How big could the market get?
Wall Street's projections are eye-watering, if wide-ranging. Goldman Sachs estimates the total addressable market for humanoid robots could reach $38 billion by 2035 — more than six times its earlier $6 billion forecast — with annual shipments climbing toward 1.4 million units. Morgan Stanley is far more bullish on the long term, modelling about 13 million humanoids in service by 2035 and a $5 trillion market by 2050 (roughly $4.7 trillion of it hardware), with as many as one billion humanoids deployed. Bank of America sees the ramp beginning now, projecting around 90,000 shipments in 2026, rising to 1.2 million by 2030 and an installed base of 3 billion by 2060. Research firms peg the sector's compound annual growth rate at roughly 35–45% over the coming decade.
The road ahead
None of these forecasts are guaranteed. Analysts caution the field is still at an early, "GPT-2.5-style" moment: the capabilities are real and the scaling curves are encouraging, but the near-flawless reliability required for mass deployment is still being engineered, and the supply chain for actuators, sensors and dexterous hands remains a bottleneck. Even so, the direction of travel is clear. With trillions in projected value, billions in fresh funding and a record number of new companies, the humanoid robot has finally stepped out of the laboratory — and into the global economy.
Reporting based on data and analysis from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley (including the "Humanoid 100"), Bank of America and Crunchbase, May 2026.