Elon Musk and his Optimus robots have been getting all the attention in the robot universe, especially after his big July announcement about humanoid bots hitting Tesla factories next year. 

But while Elon’s been busy grabbing headlines, Nvidia has been quietly building an AI development platform called Isaac Robotics that isn’t getting nearly enough spotlight.

Now, I get it, all this tech talk can get a little confusing. I’m no Robotics Engineer, but here’s the gist: Nvidia’s robotic ambitions all boil down to the Thor system-on-a-chip (SoC). It’s like the brain of your robot on performance enhancers—think Bradley Cooper in Limitless after he pops that magic pill. This AI is made to do real-time data crunching better than the best accountant you know. So when these humanoid bots are out there dodging forklifts and trying not to trip over cables on factory floors, Thor’s the one making sure they don’t freeze up like your dad’s old Windows 98 when you ask it to do more than one thing.

Now I could spend hours trying to explain all the features behind Nvidia’s new project, but the most exciting one to me is what’s called Zero-shot learning. This allows their humanoids to learn new skills on the fly with just a quick demo or some instructions so they can be ready to get right to work across different industries faster than ever.

Meanwhile, back at Tesla HQ, Elon’s tweets have made it very clear he’s got big dreams for his Optimus bots. They’re already pulling shifts at the Fremont plant and Elon’s talking about scaling up to thousands by 2025. The man’s even throwing around a $25 trillion market cap goal like it’s no biggie. While Elon’s focused on his Tesla Autobot army, Nvidia’s taking a more low-key brainy approach.

Take Apptronik, for example. They teamed up with Nvidia, and guess what? Their humanoid robot, Apollo, learned to handle tasks on its own in just 10 hours. That’s like giving a newborn a couple of naps and suddenly it’s walking and talking. Compared to traditional methods, this is lightning-fast progress, and it’s showing why Nvidia’s broader vision might just leave Tesla playing catch-up. In fact, they’ve already struck a deal with Mercedes-Benz to help manufacture their cars in their factories.

Wall Street’s starting to absorb the hype too. Goldman Sachs just released an article saying Nvidia’s advancements in humanoid robotics are set to shake up industries, with the market potentially hitting $38 billion by 2035. What used to be a joke, is not getting serious. The Goldman suits are even predicting that these robots will step in for humans in all those dangerous, soul-crushing jobs, with somewhere between 1.1 to 3.5 million of them expected to be roaming the planet in the near future.

Stock.News has positions in Tesla.