According to a report from the U.S. market observation website on June 18, a new report estimates that 2 million humanoid robots will start working in the next 10 years, and by 2050, there will be 300 million, which will help alleviate labor shortages. A 142-page report from UBS Group compiled the work of more than 30 analysts. The report concludes that by 2035, the potential total market size for these robots will reach $30 billion to $50 billion, and by 2050, it will reach $1.4 trillion to $1.7 trillion, mainly involving components, manufacturing, software, data, and services. The analyst team led by Phyllis Wang stated, “Aging populations, labor shortages, and slow productivity growth in the service sector all support the use of robots. The additional benefit of humanoid robots is their ability to adapt to daily life.” Phyllis Wang is responsible for UBS’s industrial company research.
Indeed, this will take time. UBS stated that it may take more than five years for the humanoid robot sector to reach its “electric vehicle moment.” “As futurist Roy Amara said, people tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies and underestimate their long-term impact. We have identified several obstacles that need to be overcome before mass production of humanoid robots, namely artificial intelligence, data set collection, and regulation.”
With the maturation of economies of scale and improvements in the supply chain, the price and usage costs of humanoid robots may decrease by more than 70% over the next 20 years. Global automation, automotive parts, semiconductor industries, battery companies, and rare earth refiners will all benefit, with companies mentioned by UBS including NVIDIA, Topco, Lynas Corporation, THK, Honeywell, TSMC, Weir Semiconductor, Cognex, Amphenol, and Inovance Technology. UBS stated that Tesla will also be in a favorable position.
UBS predicts that by 2050, the annual production of humanoid robots will reach 86 million units, equivalent to an increase of $400 billion in global automation revenue and an increase of $7 billion in rare earth revenue, which are four times and twice the sales figures for both in 2025, respectively. The economic benefits generated by these robots will not be from productivity improvements but rather from compensating for population constraints. “We believe they represent a slow but increasingly rational response of capital to structural bottlenecks.”