Matt Smith

CEO's question: What will be the hourly cost of work of a humanoid robot? Several projections have been published, e.g. by @CernBasher, @adam_dorr and @GoingBallistic5. Here's my take. I've produced a long-form video on this question (see link in comments). Here is the essence - based on very conservative assumptions (see attached image). - Production cost: $30,000. A humanoid is ~5% the mass of a passenger car. The costly parts are actuators and gearboxes; the rest is electronics, sensors, a few kWh of batteries, and plastics—components that are highly scalable in volume manufacturing. - Operating cost: $30,000 per year, of which $18,000 is human oversight and coordination. This is likely way too high. - Operating time: 6,600 hours per year (330 days × 20 hours/day). That equals the yearly working time of more than three people. - Work speed vs. humans: 100% initially. As with industrial robots, later generations will likely reach 200%+. - Business model: Most manufacturers will offer Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) rather than selling units, because it drives far higher revenue and margin. Expect an initial one-time fee roughly equal to manufacturing cost plus a usage fee per year, month, day, or hour. - Service life (incl. repairs): 8 years. - Market dynamics: Because humanoids will be highly profitable to use (see below), demand will ramp quickly. But many suppliers will enter, so sustained overly high monopoly pricing is unlikely. Result: Based on these assumptions, a humanoid work hour will cost at most $14. That’s the highest realistic value. With learning effects and scale, the hourly cost will drop below $10 and likely below $5. @rethink_x even projects that by 2035 a humanoid hour could cost less than $1. By comparison, a skilled worker’s fully loaded hour is $42.53. Strategic consequence: In competitive markets, companies will have no real choice: first to replace labor shortages, and soon to replace existing roles. Even at $14/hour, the financial advantage vs. human labor is close to $200,000 per robot per year. I’ve published a three-part video series on the societal implications of this inevitable shift (see comments). Urgent advice: If you make or move anything physical, start rethinking your business around humanoids—as a supplier, service provider, or user. It is quiet now, but the ramp-up will be fast. How about you? Which tasks would you deploy humanoids for first?