Yes, there's no business case for humanoid robots.
There's a business case for robots that are specialized in specific repetitive actions, and we already see this in manufacturing. But general purpose humanoid robots make no sense.
They're incredibly expensive and, from what we've seen, worse across the board compared to humans. It's cheaper to just hire humans.
The human form is actually pretty shit at most things. But, it can do everything. There's just little purpose for that in a business case. You know what you're doing, so you just need robots to do that, not to try to be humans.
Like, okay, you can get a humanoid robot to be a burger flipper. But that makes no sense. You can, instead, have an automated burger cooking machine. Which do exist! I worked in a restaurant with one 10 years ago.
I always wonder why those robots have to be humanoid.
I swear I don't need a humanoid robot, give me a proper autonomous robot that cleans your house and I'm more than happy. Could be 40 cm tall, and look like a box, I don't care.
But this is all based on the idea we need generic robots when we really need specialized ones.
It's like skipping making kitchen blenders and vacuum cleaners and instead building a robot that will be mixing stuff manually or using a broom.
Manufacturing, where 90% of the process is generally automated has countless specialized ones. It would not make sense to put generic ones there, because humans really are doing very specific work in manufacturing.
1 is the real reason. 2 is really down to things like a big brain and opposable thumbs. Our trunk/legs are evolved for persistence hunting and long distance walking - activities that drive approximately 0% of the economy at this point. If robots didn't have to navigate an environment built for bipeds, other configurations would be far more reliable/efficient.
For instance: a quadruped base can be statically stable in case of power loss - a biped really can't.
“I always wonder why those robots have to be humanoid.“
You are correct to wonder this and almost every use case for a robot will be optimized to a non-human form factor.
Certainly there are tasks - like BJJ training partner - that require a human form factor. Almost everything else, including general, purpose, helper, robot, will be cheaper and more extensible in a non-human form factor.
One of your children remarked that nature has experimented with form factors and humans have won… To which I would point out that the upright, bipedal, form factor arose from the limits of oxygen processing, and heat dissipation… Neither limitation will be encountered in the same way with a robot…
… or perhaps I would point out that nature has, indeed, experimented with form factors and ants won - by a very large margin.
instead, sub 12cm disc shaped ones are rather well understood and perform well. They suck opening doors though - but the 40cm one would have a similar issue.
Besides that: I, personally, am totally fine with the current state of the technology.
I think the technology is just not there to make the business case for humanoid robots. It’s like the VR. Everyone would like to use VR but the tech is just not good enough. Same with FSD. The robots may be 10-20 years away from actual being good enough. If Elon can trick people for 20 years like he did with FSD then he may have a business case for humanoid robots
Robots yes. Humanoid ones? Why? So people can be amazed? Purpose built robots are the future. The human form is sub optimal for most enterprise use cases.
I have no particular idea whether there's a business case for humanoid robots or not. I would love to have the argument set out well. Perhaps you'd indulge my curiosity.
I don't understand why my question was so controversial. Oftentimes on this website I feel like everyone is tapped into some polarizing news source that I am not, and so when I ask some (to my mind) benign question it's actually a secret tripwire that everyone is super polarized on and so rather than engaging in my question they all just tell me I am a moron. But I am seriously just asking a question here.
My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).
OP said:
> Humanoid robots? Ain’t nobody made the business case for that. It is pure vibes.
I can't make sense of this. Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).
The day that:
- displaced workforce issue is solved
- they cost less than 20k everything included, base model
- do all the processing locally in their HW
- are smaller and lighter than a human being (but can reach higher places)
- last 10 years at least
I will definitely buy one. I don't think I'm going to see this in my lifetime though (I'm in my 40's).
> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
This is called having a live-in maid or a cleaning service. Even in the first-world, where there isn't a disfranchised rural population to provide cheap labor to the middle class (e.g. Philippines, most of LATAM 20 years ago) the service will be cheaper than the price of a vaporware bot [0]. Now, you might say the droid is cheaper if you want a live-in maid in HCOL area, but have in mind that this thing barely can fold clothes and fill a dishwasher (an actual domestic bot). Also it sometimes is actually a dude controlling it remotely.
We would need bots of the level of that awful I Robot movie with Will Smith.
> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor.
Then why don't you hire a helper for that?
You just said you'd pay a lot of money, so money doesn't seem to be an issue. What is then?
> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
Do you own a Roomba? I don't. It's a huge liability and doesn't do the cleaning I want out of it, even at a sub-$1000 price point. The humanoid robot is clunkier, more of a liability, and will still refuse to do certain tasks.
Like, more than the cost of your house? For something that can't do those things right and has to be supervised? To a company that can't deliver product on time?
The business case for humanoid robots is simple... for lack of a better term, they're robot slaves. Companies or governments can buy them once, pay relatively minimal maintenance fees, and have an army of workers that don't need a salary, never take breaks, never complain, never unionize, and do things faster and more accurately than most humans ever will. Any company that can move to robots, will move to robots.
Imagine the profits companies will have when they can eliminate, or drastically reduce, their single largest expense... payroll. Not only the base pay, but 401K match, insurance, payroll taxes, etc. Poof... gone.
The part that often gets left unsaid or glossed over is what the transition period looks like. At most we get some Underpants Gnomes claim about unlimited abundance without actually engaging with the substance of what happens if this technology gets built and deployed. What do you imagine the political and economic impact will be if a huge portion of the population is left without jobs and the political reality hasn't caught up to the speed with which the technology gets deployed?
Oh no, but Elon Musk tells us that out of the kindness of his heart we're going to have unlimited abundance. The same man responsible for taking away aid from thousands of the poorest people in the world through DOGE's interruption of PEPFAR and USAID.
With a single sentence from him, he could start saving thousands of lives without impacting his wealth in the slightest. He could do that right now.
No, I’m saying they haven’t made the case. Or at least the case that is being presented and sold to investors is complete BS.
For example, I work in deep tech and pay attention to the manufacturing industry. The idea that humanoid robots will replace, streamline and revolutionize manufacturing is a joke in that community. They’ve already long since replaced the humans with CNC machines, industrial (non-humanoid) robots, and 3d printing.
The humanoid robotics craze is a lot like the crypto craze. Pure vibes and motivated reasoning. Like crypto, there is actual value there, but way out of proportion to the hype.
I mean, forget the manufacturing industry. I'd happily pay a lot of money just to have one help me with menial tasks around the house. I mean, I'd probably pay thousands for a bot that could just do the laundry. Are you saying that such a market doesn't exist?
The market exists, does it make financial sense to fill it? Are there enough johnfns out there willing to buy enough of them at high enough of a price to justify the mind-boggling capital required, not to mention the opportunity cost?
A robot vacuum costs thousands of dollars (will about a thousand) and they don't work very. There is no way that you are going to get a machine that is orders of magnitude more complex down to that price point any time soon.
A business case is not just a matter of a willing buyer. It is a buyer and a vendor who can agree on a price that works for both. You may have agreed but the physics of the matter mean that there is nobody to take the other side.
You already have machines that do the laundry. Put clothes in, they come out clean. Have you ever tried manually washing clothes? All you have to do is take them out and fold them.
Humanoid robots are a lot of sizzle-- they promise all sorts of flexibility, at the cost of hugely higher cost/complexity/unreliability.
If you can scope your problem to some degree, you can probably make some purpose-built automation that won't look like a human, but will do the job competently and cheaply.
I see the demos with the robots carrying boxes and think "okay, why not just use a conveyer belt?"
The market for that exist but the execution to get that product is beyond hard. Compare full self driving after all these years where are we? It’s still not a real thing. It’s still just a limited experiment. The cars have only speed and steering angle to manage. What do you think about “full self driving robots”? There is a business case for them but in the near term you cannot make one good enough for the tasks you want. Safety is a big issue on top of making the robot useful. You don’t want it hurt anyone.
There was a "business case" for $25,000 EVs before China did it, and Tesla conveniently pivoted. It's 2026, anyone who's watching the game knows the score.
Yes, there's no business case for humanoid robots.
There's a business case for robots that are specialized in specific repetitive actions, and we already see this in manufacturing. But general purpose humanoid robots make no sense.
They're incredibly expensive and, from what we've seen, worse across the board compared to humans. It's cheaper to just hire humans.
The human form is actually pretty shit at most things. But, it can do everything. There's just little purpose for that in a business case. You know what you're doing, so you just need robots to do that, not to try to be humans.
Like, okay, you can get a humanoid robot to be a burger flipper. But that makes no sense. You can, instead, have an automated burger cooking machine. Which do exist! I worked in a restaurant with one 10 years ago.
I always wonder why those robots have to be humanoid.
I swear I don't need a humanoid robot, give me a proper autonomous robot that cleans your house and I'm more than happy. Could be 40 cm tall, and look like a box, I don't care.
1. The world is designed for humans. If you need to reach the places humans reach then you need to be the same size as a human.
2. Nature has tested many different form factors and the human form dominated the others.
Ask a plumber what he thinks about reaching places human reach. Nature tested what exactly? Birds and spiders are sub optimal?
But this is all based on the idea we need generic robots when we really need specialized ones.
It's like skipping making kitchen blenders and vacuum cleaners and instead building a robot that will be mixing stuff manually or using a broom.
Manufacturing, where 90% of the process is generally automated has countless specialized ones. It would not make sense to put generic ones there, because humans really are doing very specific work in manufacturing.
1 reply →
1 is the real reason. 2 is really down to things like a big brain and opposable thumbs. Our trunk/legs are evolved for persistence hunting and long distance walking - activities that drive approximately 0% of the economy at this point. If robots didn't have to navigate an environment built for bipeds, other configurations would be far more reliable/efficient.
For instance: a quadruped base can be statically stable in case of power loss - a biped really can't.
“I always wonder why those robots have to be humanoid.“
You are correct to wonder this and almost every use case for a robot will be optimized to a non-human form factor.
Certainly there are tasks - like BJJ training partner - that require a human form factor. Almost everything else, including general, purpose, helper, robot, will be cheaper and more extensible in a non-human form factor.
One of your children remarked that nature has experimented with form factors and humans have won… To which I would point out that the upright, bipedal, form factor arose from the limits of oxygen processing, and heat dissipation… Neither limitation will be encountered in the same way with a robot…
… or perhaps I would point out that nature has, indeed, experimented with form factors and ants won - by a very large margin.
instead, sub 12cm disc shaped ones are rather well understood and perform well. They suck opening doors though - but the 40cm one would have a similar issue.
Besides that: I, personally, am totally fine with the current state of the technology.
I think the technology is just not there to make the business case for humanoid robots. It’s like the VR. Everyone would like to use VR but the tech is just not good enough. Same with FSD. The robots may be 10-20 years away from actual being good enough. If Elon can trick people for 20 years like he did with FSD then he may have a business case for humanoid robots
Robots yes. Humanoid ones? Why? So people can be amazed? Purpose built robots are the future. The human form is sub optimal for most enterprise use cases.
I have no particular idea whether there's a business case for humanoid robots or not. I would love to have the argument set out well. Perhaps you'd indulge my curiosity.
I don't understand why my question was so controversial. Oftentimes on this website I feel like everyone is tapped into some polarizing news source that I am not, and so when I ask some (to my mind) benign question it's actually a secret tripwire that everyone is super polarized on and so rather than engaging in my question they all just tell me I am a moron. But I am seriously just asking a question here.
My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).
OP said:
> Humanoid robots? Ain’t nobody made the business case for that. It is pure vibes.
I can't make sense of this. Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).
The day that:
- displaced workforce issue is solved
- they cost less than 20k everything included, base model
- do all the processing locally in their HW
- are smaller and lighter than a human being (but can reach higher places)
- last 10 years at least
I will definitely buy one. I don't think I'm going to see this in my lifetime though (I'm in my 40's).
And another thought: if the robot can do housework, can it do factory work? Fieldwork? Lawn care? What else can it do with zero modifications?
That expands the market greatly.
> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
This is called having a live-in maid or a cleaning service. Even in the first-world, where there isn't a disfranchised rural population to provide cheap labor to the middle class (e.g. Philippines, most of LATAM 20 years ago) the service will be cheaper than the price of a vaporware bot [0]. Now, you might say the droid is cheaper if you want a live-in maid in HCOL area, but have in mind that this thing barely can fold clothes and fill a dishwasher (an actual domestic bot). Also it sometimes is actually a dude controlling it remotely.
We would need bots of the level of that awful I Robot movie with Will Smith.
[0] https://www.1x.tech/order
No, I wouldn’t.
For one, I don’t spend a lot of time doing housework. Just organize your life better.
Beyond that, the cost would not be small. Based on current designs, operating costs would be thousands of dollars per month. I would not pay that.
It would require a cloud controlled robot with cameras in my home. Why in the world would I want that.
Finally, I already have dishwashers and laundry machines.
2 replies →
You couldn't pay me any amount of money to have a robot in my home if it's controlled from Elon Musk's data center.
And I'm a former Tesla FSD customer, so I should be the ideal early adopter for this product.
Do you already pay a human to do this work?
> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor.
Then why don't you hire a helper for that? You just said you'd pay a lot of money, so money doesn't seem to be an issue. What is then?
3 replies →
> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
Do you own a Roomba? I don't. It's a huge liability and doesn't do the cleaning I want out of it, even at a sub-$1000 price point. The humanoid robot is clunkier, more of a liability, and will still refuse to do certain tasks.
1 reply →
You would pay "a lot of money"?
Like, more than the cost of your house? For something that can't do those things right and has to be supervised? To a company that can't deliver product on time?
2 replies →
The business case for humanoid robots is simple... for lack of a better term, they're robot slaves. Companies or governments can buy them once, pay relatively minimal maintenance fees, and have an army of workers that don't need a salary, never take breaks, never complain, never unionize, and do things faster and more accurately than most humans ever will. Any company that can move to robots, will move to robots.
Imagine the profits companies will have when they can eliminate, or drastically reduce, their single largest expense... payroll. Not only the base pay, but 401K match, insurance, payroll taxes, etc. Poof... gone.
I agree with everything you've said. To me the next question is: If nobody has a job, who will buy all the robot-produced goods?
1 reply →
But why are they in humanoid form? Wheels are more efficient than legs, they have no need for a face. It sure does sound like vibes
5 replies →
The part that often gets left unsaid or glossed over is what the transition period looks like. At most we get some Underpants Gnomes claim about unlimited abundance without actually engaging with the substance of what happens if this technology gets built and deployed. What do you imagine the political and economic impact will be if a huge portion of the population is left without jobs and the political reality hasn't caught up to the speed with which the technology gets deployed?
Oh no, but Elon Musk tells us that out of the kindness of his heart we're going to have unlimited abundance. The same man responsible for taking away aid from thousands of the poorest people in the world through DOGE's interruption of PEPFAR and USAID.
With a single sentence from him, he could start saving thousands of lives without impacting his wealth in the slightest. He could do that right now.
Maybe there is. But isn’t Tesla way, way behind Hyundai at this? It’s not even close? Yet Hyundai’s stock is still very cheap..
No, I’m saying they haven’t made the case. Or at least the case that is being presented and sold to investors is complete BS.
For example, I work in deep tech and pay attention to the manufacturing industry. The idea that humanoid robots will replace, streamline and revolutionize manufacturing is a joke in that community. They’ve already long since replaced the humans with CNC machines, industrial (non-humanoid) robots, and 3d printing.
The humanoid robotics craze is a lot like the crypto craze. Pure vibes and motivated reasoning. Like crypto, there is actual value there, but way out of proportion to the hype.
I mean, forget the manufacturing industry. I'd happily pay a lot of money just to have one help me with menial tasks around the house. I mean, I'd probably pay thousands for a bot that could just do the laundry. Are you saying that such a market doesn't exist?
The market exists, does it make financial sense to fill it? Are there enough johnfns out there willing to buy enough of them at high enough of a price to justify the mind-boggling capital required, not to mention the opportunity cost?
8 replies →
A robot vacuum costs thousands of dollars (will about a thousand) and they don't work very. There is no way that you are going to get a machine that is orders of magnitude more complex down to that price point any time soon.
A business case is not just a matter of a willing buyer. It is a buyer and a vendor who can agree on a price that works for both. You may have agreed but the physics of the matter mean that there is nobody to take the other side.
You already have machines that do the laundry. Put clothes in, they come out clean. Have you ever tried manually washing clothes? All you have to do is take them out and fold them.
4 replies →
Humanoid robots are a lot of sizzle-- they promise all sorts of flexibility, at the cost of hugely higher cost/complexity/unreliability.
If you can scope your problem to some degree, you can probably make some purpose-built automation that won't look like a human, but will do the job competently and cheaply.
I see the demos with the robots carrying boxes and think "okay, why not just use a conveyer belt?"
6 replies →
The market for that exist but the execution to get that product is beyond hard. Compare full self driving after all these years where are we? It’s still not a real thing. It’s still just a limited experiment. The cars have only speed and steering angle to manage. What do you think about “full self driving robots”? There is a business case for them but in the near term you cannot make one good enough for the tasks you want. Safety is a big issue on top of making the robot useful. You don’t want it hurt anyone.
2 replies →
If you think our current tech stack is anywhere close to making humanoid robots viable, then you might as well buy Tesla stock.
There's a huge business case! There's also a major business case for teleportation, which seems about as likely to happen under a Musk-led company.
Not for what they currently cost and are capable of.
There was a "business case" for $25,000 EVs before China did it, and Tesla conveniently pivoted. It's 2026, anyone who's watching the game knows the score.
No, they're probably saying you're that believer that will buy the dip.
I own no TSLA stock and never have. I have no horse in this race.