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The robot race is on, and Nvidia wants to be a player, just like Tesla.
Over the weekend, at COMPUTEX 2026 in Taiwan, Nvidia announced plans to accelerate development of humanoid robots. There will be an “open humanoid robot reference design built on the Nvidia Isaac GR00T platform, combining a Unitree H2 Plus humanoid robot, Sharpa five-fingered hands for dexterous manipulation, NVIDIA Jetson Thor onboard compute for advanced reasoning and control,” reads part of a news release.
That’s a mouthful. Isaac GRoot is Nvidia’s software for robot brains, running on Jetson Thor hardware. Unitree makes AI-trained humanoid robots. Sharpa is an AI start-up developing hands that have humanlike dexterity.
Taken together, Nvidia is making it easier to make useful humanoid robots that can one day expand the labor force.
“Humanoid robots will bring physical AI to the world’s largest industries, opening a multitrillion-dollar economic opportunity,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in a news release. “The NVIDIA Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot gives researchers a single, open platform to make breakthrough discoveries toward general-purpose physical intelligence.”
Nvidia, of course, wants to sell more processors that go into data centers, robots, or any other AI application. To some extent, the move puts Nvidia in competition with Tesla, which also wants to dominate AI-trained robots. Elon Musk’s EV recently ceased production of the Model S and X. Tesla is converting that capacity in Fremont, Calif., to a line for mass-producing the humanoid robot, Optimus.
It isn’t the first time Nvidia’s strategy has bumped up against Tesla. Nvidia also produces self-driving technology that can be used by any auto maker to create a robo-taxi. Tesla is staking a lot that its self-driving tech will lead the industry.
Musk doesn’t seem to mind. It’s too early to declare winners and losers in the physical AI space, and the entire industry, Tesla included, needs the supply chain to develop. Demonstrating credible products is part of convincing suppliers to invest.
Of course, Tesla is also an Nvidia customer, buying processors for Tesla’s AI data centers.
Musk believes robots will be the biggest industry in human history with billions of robots sold for roughly $20,000 each. Many other companies are after a slice of that pie.
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard tracks the progress of several players, including Tesla, Figure AI, Agility, Boston Dynamics, 1X Technologies, Unitree, and others.
Robots need more than processors and AI brains. “Many key humanoid components are also found within the EV ecosystem, such as motors, actuator power electronics, magnets and advanced motion-control bearings,” wrote Sheppard.
Like in EVs, China leads the U.S., producing more than 80% of the world’s humanoid robots today. The U.S. is going to have to try to shrink that lead. “There now may be an accelerated commercialization timeline for humanoid robots in the United States, and we expect domestic production to begin to ramp up materially over the next 12 months,” Sheppard adds.
Some of those will be from Tesla. Some will be from other start-ups. Whoever makes them, useful robots that look a little like people are closer than investors might expect.
Tesla stock dropped 4.6% on Monday, while the S&P 500 rose 0.3%. Robots might have had something to do with it. Along with the Nvidia news, OpenAI announced it was hiring for its nascent robot business.
It’s going to be tough for investors to pick winners and losers early in the robot race.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
English (US) ·