00:00A $40 trillion market. NVIDIA's CEO is betting big on robots and teaming up with China's Unitree.
00:12Now, earlier in the program, we were talking about physical AI, humanoid robots,
00:17and the plans that NVIDIA has to team up with Unitree,
00:20and also how the CEO thinks it's going to be this $40 trillion market.
00:24So let's dive into that a bit more with Rob Nias,
00:26his founding partner of H-Tree Capital, a London-based technology venture capital firm.
00:31Always good to have you on the show.
00:34CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, predicts that physical AI could become a market worth tens of trillions of dollars.
00:41He would say that. Could it?
00:44Absolutely. I think it certainly can.
00:46I think the way they're looking at it may not be the right pathway with how it actually goes,
00:50but certainly everything that has physical components will benefit from some kind of AI in the future.
00:55I mean, just thinking about the complexity of moving parts and of the human ecosystem,
00:59there's so many things that AI can do better than conventional systems can do.
01:03How big a step is it when humanoid robots move from research labs into universities and real-world testing?
01:11I don't think it's real.
01:13It's great, great for research.
01:15A lot of other things will come out of the research,
01:17but since they were invented, humans have been anthropomorphizing robots
01:20and giving them names and pretending they're people.
01:23But the human form is actually really bad to make a robot out of.
01:27You know, creating a bipedal that has to stabilize on its own two legs
01:31and has to have independent arms is not a very useful tool.
01:34And that's why if you look at robots now across the world in actual use,
01:37I don't think there's any really industrial-used robot that looks like a robot,
01:40that looks like a human.
01:41They look like their function,
01:42which uses beautiful things like wheels and gears,
01:45which humans don't have.
01:47Now, Unitary is heading towards a listing in China.
01:51What does that say, do you think,
01:52about the maturity of China's robotic sector?
01:56I think that the sector is undoubtedly real.
01:59I mean, China has that vast industrial capability now,
02:01so mechanization and robotization make perfect sense in that context.
02:05So you have an amazing base of local customers
02:08and a national support from the very top.
02:10It's a very good, real market for everyone else.
02:12You know, I think it's happening around the world.
02:13It just doesn't have that level of investment
02:15that's centralized like you have in China.
02:17Let's bring it back to that collaboration.
02:19So with NVIDIA building partnerships like they're doing with Unitary,
02:22but also across the United States, Europe and Asia,
02:26who do you think is best placed in the global robotics race?
02:30I think it's too early to say again,
02:32because if you look at these robots,
02:33most of them aren't going to have like a GPU-type chip on them,
02:36which is what NVIDIA makes.
02:37They're going to have, if they do have AI built into the robot itself,
02:40they're going to have very specialized chips that are lower cost
02:43and higher efficiency, because you always have constraints.
02:45You don't have a data center in your factory.
02:47You have maybe robots in your factory.
02:49So the space for everything either has to be offloaded
02:51to a proper data center for the computing power,
02:53or you use very specialized chips in the robots themselves.
02:56So I think NVIDIA has to be part of that ecosystem no matter what.
03:00But I don't know it'll be what they're selling right now, GPUs.
03:03I think they're basically ensuring they have a space at the table
03:05when those things do start ramping up and requiring more power.
03:07Now, Rob, I don't know when you bought into this.
03:10I know some people have been on NVIDIA's radar for 15 years,
03:13but the markets seem to be super excited about physical AI.
03:18Is this the market to get it on now, or should you wait?
03:23Honestly, with everything I've done in robotics, it's real.
03:26It happens.
03:27It just happens at a far slower pace than people expect.
03:29I think right now, it's in the markets.
03:31NVIDIA can do no wrong.
03:32So I certainly won't talk against anything NVIDIA does.
03:35But I think like any big company, they have to have a footprint in every way,
03:38the same way Intel has done the past 20 or 30 years.
03:41Every single thing that was a smart gadget or IoT or smart home,
03:44Intel had some component for that.
03:46Did it really become a profit center?
03:47Not really at all.
03:48But when you're that kind of company, you have to have a finger in every pie.
03:52Rob Niaz, thanks so much.
03:53That's Rob Niaz from the Venture Capital Group, based in London.
Comments