Investing.com -- Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang expects humanoid robots to become widely used in manufacturing within the next five years.
Speaking at the company’s annual developer conference in San Jose, California, Huang delivered a keynote address to a packed stadium. Later, in a discussion with journalists, he was asked what signals would indicate that AI had become ubiquitous.
“...when, literally, humanoid robots are wandering around, which is not five years away. This is not five-years-away problem, this is a few-years-away problem,” Huang said.
He noted that the manufacturing sector would likely be the first to adopt humanoid robots, as its structured environment and well-defined tasks make it easier for automation.
“I think it ought to go to factories first. And the reason for that is because the domain is much more guard-railed, and the use case is much more specific,” he explained.
“The value of it is very, very easy to determine. The going rate for renting a human robot is probably $100,000 and I think it’s pretty good economics.”
During the keynote, among other announcements, Nvidia introduced Isaac GR00T N1, the world’s first open foundation model designed for general-purpose humanoid robots.
The model features a dual-system framework, where a slow-thinking system handles deliberate decision-making, while a fast-thinking system swiftly converts those decisions into actions.
“We believe these new models could shorten humanoid robot’s training time and offer efficient data collection,” Macquarie analyst Daisy Zhang said in a note.
Macquarie projects that humanoid robots will capture the spotlight in the coming years, with global volumes reaching 6.3 million units by 2035, reflecting a 71% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2026 to 2035.
The firm estimates the average selling price (ASP) will start at approximately $74,000 in 2026 but decline to around $22,000 by 2035 as production scales and costs decrease.
By then, Macquarie expects the humanoid robot market to be valued at $139 billion, growing at a 50% CAGR over the same period.