Meet the top 16 humanoid robots shaping the decade ahead, and their impact on industries, society and our economy.

I was compelled to create this Metatrend report because the coming wave of humanoid robots will have a vast impact on society that is widely underappreciated. It will transform our lives at home and work.

How Many?:

In my conversations with Elon Musk, Brett Adcock, Cathie Wood, and Vinod Khosla, the predictions on how many humanoid robots we will have working alongside us by 2040 is shocking at best. At the lowest bound, the number is 1 billion (which is more than the number of automobiles on Earth) and at the upper bound, proclaimed by Musk and Adcock, the number will exceed 10 billion.

How Much?:

But equally impressive as the sheer number of robots is the price point, predicted to be between $20,000 to $30,000 which translates to a leased cost on the order of $300 per month, for a robot helper working 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Why Now?:

The first question to ask is why now? Why are we seeing such an explosion of activity in the humanoid robot field now? Beyond any single technical advancement, the convergence of 5 major technological areas are super-charging this field: multimodal generative AI, high-torque actuators, increased compute power, enhanced battery life, cameras and tactile sensors. This, in combination with AI voice recognition, is transformative:

As Brett Adcock recently told me, "We can literally talk to our robot and it can implement the tasks you request -- the end-state for this is you really want the default UI to be speech."

Impact on Jobs:

Naturally, the prospect of billions of humanoid robots raises questions about their impact on jobs and society. According to Adcock: "Our goal is to really be able to do a lot of the jobs that are not desirable by humans.” As of Q3 2024, there are nearly 8 million US job openings — jobs that people just don't want to do.

Creating a Future of Abundance:

As Musk has commented regarding a future involving humanoid robots: “This means a future of abundance, a future where there is no poverty, where people, you can have whatever you want, in terms of products and services. It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it.”

Adcock echoes this vision, “You can basically create a world where goods and services prices are trending to zero in the limit and GDP spikes to infinity ... You basically can request anything you would want and it would be relatively affordable for everybody in the world."

I hope you enjoy this Metatrend report, and are preparing for a future of Abundance (and an abundance of robots).

Click here for the full report.

Peter H. Diamandis, MD
Founder, Singularity, Abundance360, XPRIZE