McKinsey Enters AI Delusion Mode After Jensen Huang Teases Humanoid Robots’ “ChatGPT Moment”

Las Vegas has seen some things. Mike Tyson biting off a guy's ear in his prime. Endless Elvis sightings. A dogs*t football team owned by Jim Carrey’s character on Dumb and Dumber. But this week, Las Vegas Lost Wages went full I, Robot.

CES this year turned into a humanoid robot parade where machines danced, shadowboxed, played blackjack, folded towels at the speed of “we’re gonna have to find a new maid...”

And generally reminded everyone that physical AI is no longer just a place to say “Grok, put a bikini on George Washington at Valley Forge.” It’s now walking around on plush casino carpet, occasionally losing its balance, and absolutely getting AI bros way too invested (pun intended).

Of course, standing dead center of this robot fever dream was Jensen Huang (leather jacket zipped, obviously) explaining that humanoid robots are basically Nvidia’s AI factories finding a new hobby after conquering the data center.

Make no mistake, when Jensen says the humanoid industry is “riding on the work of the AI factories we’re building for other AI stuff,” what he really means is: you thought GPUs were just for chatbots?

(Source: CNET)

Jensen used just about every CES appearance to drive the point home, rolling out new robot brains like downloadable content. Vision-language models that turn messy sensor data into real movement, and reasoning models meant to help robots think through a task instead of freezing up or panicking the moment something unexpected happens (which is kind of the whole reason robots aren’t mainstream yet).

The partner list didn’t hurt either, stacking names like Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar, and LG. Then Jensen dropped the sci-fi teaser everyone wanted to hear, saying robots with some human-level capabilities are coming this year. (Again, before anyone freaks out, yes, folding laundry still takes about 30 seconds).

Nvidia wasn’t alone in joining the hype show. AMD showed off a humanoid robot backed by its GPUs that’s headed for shipyards later this year. Qualcomm rolled into Vegas pushing robot chips and vision models designed to teach machines how to grab, move, and not destroy things.

Google’s DeepMind announced it’s teaming up with Boston Dynamics to give Atlas (their humanoid robot) a smarter brain. LG even unveiled a wheeled home robot that promised to make breakfast… which at the same time proved it has all the urgency of a DMV employee on a Friday afternoon.

It’s starting to feel like the gravy train is officially here. And every major player wants to become the one-stop shop for robotics developers, bundling chips, software, and training so developers don’t have to piecemeal six vendors together and hope nothing explodes.

This, of course, has consultants salivating like a dog standing over a bone. McKinsey (the final boss of consulting) thinks general-purpose robotics could turn into a $370 billion market by 2040, with use cases spanning warehouses, factories, farms, hospitals, and retail. 

That said, as much as I hate to be Johnny Raincloud… reality still exists. Most of what people saw at CES was eye candy. Remember, commercial deployment is slow. Homes are messy, unpredictable, and full of pets that do not respect lidar. And most notably, there’s still a YUGE gap between a slick demo and a machine that can work eight hours without causing a lawsuit.

Still, this feels like a monumental moment. Self-driving cars were the first real taste of physical AI. Humanoids are the sequel, powered by the same generative tech that made ChatGPT unavoidable. Case in point, China’s Unitree showed off a $70,000 robot boxing and dancing (something that would’ve cost $250,000 just a couple years ago). 

Nvidia demoed surgical robots assisting spine procedures. And other humanoids awkwardly chatted with attendees while fighting gravity and casino carpeting.

To bring Jensen back into the equation, he garnered a lot of attention when he said robots are having their ChatGPT moment. They’re not ready to replace humans. But they’re done being a joke. And history suggests that when Jensen Huang says something has a moment, someone’s capital expenditure budget is about to get absolutely obliterated.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Google as mentioned in the article.