At this year's RoboBusiness, nearly every conversation echoed the same sentiment - robotics has finally hit its inflection point.
I joined Jay Wong, Jay Singh and Parna Sarkar-Basu on a panel entitled - what every robotics founder must know about scaling to $1M and beyond.
After years of promise, the convergence of AI and robotics, what some call physical AI, is turning heads and loosening wallets. As a result, the global robotics market is projected to reach $50 billion in 2025, up 11 percent from last year, and robotics investments reached $4.35 billion as of July.
Yet the real question isn't whether investors will enter the space, because they will. It's about who will shape the market. Most venture capitalists remain wary of hardware. They're used to SaaS-style speed and margins and not manufacturing, supply chains and long development cycles.
That hesitation could create a power vacuum, one that lets big players corner the market and "crown" the next generation of robotics leaders, much like what Amazon did when it acquired Kiva Systems.
For smaller investors, this is a defining moment. Those who overcome their fear of hardware could help build the next wave of physical AI - robots that perceive, adapt and reason in the real world. Those who don't may find the field already claimed by the giants.
For me, the signal from RoboBusiness was clear: robotics is no longer a futuristic bet. It's a business reality and the next big economic engine.