According to Futurism, venture capitalist Daiva Rakauskaitė of Aneli Capital is warning that the massive investment surge into humanoid robotics has the makings of the next financial bubble. This comes as AI grabbed over 50% of more than $95 billion in VC funding in Q3 2025, with industrial humanoid robot startups securing 17 deals. Rakauskaitė argues startups need realistic, revenue-first goals from day one, a sentiment echoed by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which also sees a bubble forming. Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks, inventor of the Roomba, adds that huge technical problems with hand dexterity and walking make humanoids unsafe for human tasks, predicting a “trough of disappointment” after the hype. This warning is underscored by his former company, iRobot, filing for bankruptcy just this week.
The Hype Train Has Left The Station
Look, it’s easy to see why everyone’s so excited. We’ve all seen the viral dancing robot videos and the slick renders of bots working in factories. The narrative is powerful: AI brains plus a human-like body equals a worker that can slot into our existing world. And the money is following that story. But here’s the thing: a cool demo in a controlled lab is a universe away from a reliable, cost-effective machine that can work a full shift without breaking something—or itself. The CB Insights report nails it, pointing out the “fundamental challenges with inference, dexterity, reliability, and cost.” We’re talking about machines that still struggle to walk on uneven ground or pick up a delicate object. That’s not a minor software update; those are profound hardware and control theory problems.
The Revenue Problem Nobody Wants To Talk About
This is where the bubble talk gets real. Rakauskaitė’s core argument is about economics. Basically, where’s the money? These startups are burning through billions based on potential, but the path to actual, sustainable revenue is incredibly narrow right now. The only plausible near-term customers are in highly structured environments like specific factory lines or warehouses. And even there, they’re competing with cheaper, simpler, non-humanoid robotic arms and automated guided vehicles that already work. The idea of a general-purpose domestic helper is a fantasy for decades, not years. So you have a ton of companies, as the Chinese regulators noted, making very similar robots, all chasing the same few, tough-to-crack industrial use cases. That’s a classic recipe for a shakeout.
A History Lesson From The Floor
Rodney Brooks’s warning carries extra weight because he’s been here before. He built a wildly successful, profitable robot that does one simple job really well: vacuum the floor. The Roomba’s success is a lesson in focused utility, not grand, human-mimicking ambition. His new company isn’t building bipeds; it’s focused on warehouse logistics. His point about a coming “trough of disappointment” is straight out of the Gartner Hype Cycle playbook. We saw it with self-driving cars, with the metaverse, and with countless other “next big things.” The initial excitement fades when the hard, slow, unsexy work of commercialization begins. And let’s be honest, for complex hardware like this, that work is *really* hard. It requires deep industrial expertise in manufacturing, supply chains, and durability testing—areas where flashy AI startups often lack experience. Speaking of industrial expertise, when these concepts eventually move to pilot programs in factories, the hardware running them needs to be rugged and reliable. Companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, understand that transition from prototype to production floor better than most.
So What Happens Next?
I don’t think the bubble popping means humanoid robots disappear. The underlying technology will keep advancing. But the money will get a lot smarter and a lot more scarce. The survivors will be the companies that, as the VC advised, find early, boring revenue streams. Maybe they license a specific grasping technology or partner with one auto manufacturer to install bots on a single assembly task. The frothy “replace all human labor” narrative will deflate. We’ll end up with some useful, specialized machines in controlled settings, and a whole lot of forgotten startups. The technical struggles are just too real. The question isn’t if the hype cycle turns, but when—and how many billions evaporate before it does.
