What would a 'first real exit' in this space actually look like?

[ashley_flor]

Tangent, but worth mentioning: Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) - subscription, leasing, or usage-based pricing instead of outright purchase - is emerging specifically to lower the adoption barrier for businesses that don't want to commit large capital expenditure to an unproven new category. Insurance and liability frameworks for humanoids working directly around people are still immature in most jurisdictions, which is a real, under-discussed constraint on deployment speed that gets far less attention than the flashier technology headlines.

[kwilliams]

I'll believe the stronger version of that claim when it's independently verified. The 'labor shortage' framing in a lot of humanoid robotics pitch decks is doing real narrative work - it's a genuinely true dynamic in some sectors like warehousing and logistics, but it's also a much more palatable framing than 'labor cost reduction,' and both are usually true simultaneously.

[chenperez]

Related question - Automotive OEMs becoming the leading early-adopter vertical isn't really about cars specifically - it's about those companies already having structured facilities, existing automation budgets, and risk tolerance for piloting new equipment at scale. Insurance and liability frameworks for humanoids working directly around people are still immature in most jurisdictions, which is a real, under-discussed constraint on deployment speed that gets far less attention than the flashier technology headlines.

[noah_pate]

Genuinely curious - A recurring critique worth taking seriously: a lot of publicly announced 'production capacity' targets (100k units/year, 1 million/year by 2028, etc.) are aspirational manufacturing targets, not confirmed sales or deployment numbers, and the gap between the two has historically been large in hardware industries. Anyway, good thread - following for more.