everything i'm seeing tells me robotics is really inflecting right now > TONS of talent and capital in silicon valley are pivoting to hardware (because AI has wiped out a lot of software's moat) > robotics + physical AI startups had already raised more than $23B by midyear, versus $27.6B in all of 2025 and only $13.7B in all of 2024 > YC's winter batch funded 35 industrial + defense startups, up from 17 one batch earlier > and this is happening right as foundation models give robots the ability to see, understand and adapt instead of just repeating programmed motions > example: Generalist just showed a robot learning a new task from one physical demo in seconds. basically physical prompting > at the same time, actuators, sensors, cameras and batteries keep getting dramatically cheaper, which is finally showing up in what complete robots cost > a Unitree humanoid now starts at $4,900 and Microduck is taking $399 preorders > this is where the inflection happens: robots become good enough to do useful work AND cheap enough that buying one saves money > jobs that were too difficult or expensive to automate suddenly become worth automating. more businesses have a reason to buy robots > those buyers attract more investment and more companies competing to build better robots for less money > which makes another wave of jobs worth automating, bringing in even more buyers and investment > that's how gradual improvements can turn into rapidly growing demand, with that demand helping fund the next round of improvements > the flywheel is flywheeling also anecdotally, i'm suddenly getting way more robotics sponsorship requests (i got none before) which means robotics companies clearly think normal people are ready to care about robots