Goldman Sachs has sharply raised its humanoid robot forecast, now projecting global shipments of 6.5 million units by 2035—a nearly fivefold increase from its prior estimate of 1.4 million. The associated market value reaches $138 billion by 2035, up from an earlier projection of $38 billion. The revision appears in a fresh 80-page report on physical AI and reflects faster progress in artificial intelligence, declining hardware prices, and surging corporate bets on machines that can work alongside people.
The production trajectory
Goldman now expects 75,000 humanoid robots shipped in 2026, up from an earlier forecast of 51,000. By 2030, the figure climbs to 890,000, more than triple the previous projection of 256,000. Logistics, warehousing, and automotive manufacturing stand out as early strongholds. The bank's report describes humanoids achieving 98% reliability loading nuts in auto production and 90% on logistics jobs such as sorting parts and folding boxes.
Production ramps have accelerated. Figure AI increased output from one robot per day to one per hour. UBTECH in China ships a Walker model every 10 minutes on dedicated lines where robots help build other robots. Tesla's Optimus unit shipped its 50,000th deployment across North American distribution centers in July 2026, the largest commercial rollout of a humanoid robot platform reported to date.
Who is deploying
JD.com announced in June 2026 that it would deploy 100,000 humanoid units by 2030 across domestic and international networks. XPO Logistics and J.B. Hunt have each committed to 5,000-unit fleets by 2028. Hyundai plans to deploy more than 25,000 Atlas robots across Hyundai and Kia manufacturing plants before expanding to external sales. In China, 40,000 humanoid robots were produced in the first half of 2026 alone, matching the country's entire 2025 output in six months.
The economics are shifting the adoption calculus. An Optimus unit leases for about $8,500 per month in 2026, versus roughly $4,500 for a full-time human worker including benefits and overhead. Early adoption is focused on repetitive pick-and-place tasks in warehouses and sorting facilities, where humanoid form factors solve a real logistics problem even if the public image is often more dramatic than the day-to-day work.
What is still uncertain
Full autonomy remains a longer-term bet. Most commercial systems today are very good at one task under narrow conditions, or roughly capable at many, but not yet at the reliability levels that would remove human oversight from high-variability environments. The policy, labor, and geopolitical implications are also still catching up to the production trend. Goldman's upgrade is a strong signal that the economics and technology trajectory have improved faster than many forecasters expected, but the gap between targeted production deployments and broadly capable general-purpose robots is still large.