Silicon Valley's new slogan: Let's get physical

Silicon Valley spent the last few years teaching AI to talk. Now firms are racing to give AI a body that can lift, sort, build, and eventually live alongside people. At Nvidia GTC Taipei, the company unveiled a standard humanoid robot blueprint for academic researchers, expected to be available in late 2026, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman called robotics the company’s next frontier: "In the short term, we are focused on robots to support skilled workers to build our future infrastructure; in the long term, we imagine everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need." The competition has drawn big tech and a flock of startups to humanoids, specialized robots, and the software that helps them navigate the real world.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang popularized the term "physical AI," and startups like Figure AI have staged viral demos — its humanoids tag-teamed a week of package sorting in May and later signed a commercial deal with Catalyst Brands to deploy robots in distribution and logistics.

Taiwan, Taipei

physical ai, humanoid robots, nvidia, nvidia gtc, openai, sam altman, figure ai, package sorting, catalyst brands, logistics