The robots aren't coming — they're already clocked in. As semiconductor stocks stumble under valuation pressure, investors are rotating into the next leg of the AI trade: automation and robotics. The next chapter of the AI trade is about turning intelligence into productivity.

Gearing up: Research firm Bespoke Investment Group flagged robotics as the AI-adjacent theme investors should be considering right now. Google search interest in robotics has risen exponentially over the past year, and Japanese machine orders for industrial robots have grown 24.5%. Bespoke splits the opportunity into two baskets: companies with direct robotics and automation products, and picks-and-shovels suppliers of critical components.

• The direct robotics basket includes names like TeslaTSLA
  , AmazonAMZN
  , ABBABBNY
  , Intuitive SurgicalISRG
  , and TeradyneTER
  , each with established or rapidly scaling robot operations.
• The picks-and-shovels basket is led by NvidiaNVDA
  and AMDAMD
  for compute, plus industrial specialists like SiemensSIEGY
  , Analog DevicesADI
  , and Emerson ElectricEMR
  .

The Fundamentals Behind the Hype

The labor shortage is becoming a tailwind for robotics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported more than 400K open US manufacturing positions in Dec. 2025, largely repetitive jobs that remain difficult to staff. Agility Robotics prices its robots at about $30 an hour, compared with the $46.30 average employer cost for manufacturing workers. The economics are converging fast:

• US robot installations rose 11% to 38K in 2025, with food industry adoption jumping 30%, signaling demand is spreading beyond automotive.
• The International Federation of Robotics expects annual global installations to grow from 542K in 2024 to more than 700K by 2028.

Automation's next wave: For broader exposure, robotics ETFs offer a diversified way to play the trend. The KraneShares Global Humanoid Robotics ETFKOID

is up 56% over the past year, while the Global X Robotics & AI ETFBOTZ

and Roundhill Humanoid Robotics ETFHUMN

provide automation and humanoid exposure. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra believes humanoid robots could become an even bigger opportunity than AI data centers. It's another sign the next phase of AI is becoming more physical.