Valuations for Most Robotics Startups Will Fall By 2030, Says Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla has been one of the most optimistic investors in robotics, predicting the field will have a “ChatGPT moment” in the next two years. But he is also warning that too much investment and lofty valuations in the hottest robotics startups mean a big shake-out is coming.
“I would say more than half will be below their current valuations by 2030,” he said in an interview, while adding that the ones that are not “will have huge multiples.”
Of course, it’s generally true that most venture capital bets don’t pan out, but Khosla’s comments are notable in light of similar warnings in China about its world-leading robotics industry. Last year, China’s economic planning agency warned that over 150 companies are working on creating humanoid robots, a number so great that it risks creating a bubble in the sector. Humanoid giant Unitree had a rocky debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange last month, prompting Chinese regulators to tighten approvals for humanoid startups seeking to go public, The Information reported.
Khosla Ventures, which the longtime tech executive and entrepreneur founded in 2004, has invested in robotics startups including Rhoda AI, which trains robotic foundation models, and Aim, which enables earthmoving machines to work autonomously. Khosla remains bullish that the ChatGPT-like inflection point he foresees for robots will create some big winners among humanoid companies. At that point, he predicts, humanoids capable of fine manipulation will take on new industrial tasks after learning from just an hour or two of data.
One big question: whose AI models will serve as the brain for those robots? Until recently, physical AI models from startups like Physical Intelligence and Skild were considered the favorites in that race, but the AI companies training language models have recently notched improvements at controlling robots. OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, for example, worked better than some specialized robotics AI models when controlling robot arms in recent tests. One person even gave an Astra-powered robot a canvas and brushes and the model painted scenes of the Golden Gate bridge.
If a language model company is going to bring about the ChatGPT moment for robotics, Khosla’s money is on OpenAI itself—perhaps unsurprising, given his firm is one of OpenAI’s earliest investors. “I would put them in order as OpenAI, then maybe DeepMind, possibly Anthropic,” he said. “Meta is doing some specialized things in their home robotics effort.”
Anthropic is trailing the pack on Khosla’s list because “in robotics, Anthropic is barely getting started now. They were very late to try it. That‘s why I don’t think of them as likely candidates.”
One factor that could eventually slow robotics progress at the leading AI companies is their efforts to constrain the pace of model development. Such proposals have recently gained popularity among these companies as a means to buy time for work on AI safety, but these proposals so far have focused on the digital capabilities of AI models.
Robotics could enter the pacing conversation in the future if AI models are capable of powering military robots, Khosla said. At that point, “national security will be in play,” he said. Once robotics hits a ChatGPT moment, “I think this becomes a front-and-center issue.”
Robotics isn’t the only sector seeing sky-high valuations. There are “plenty of companies where I would like to be an investor, but decided to not do it strictly for valuation reasons. That's pretty common now,” Khosla said. “You know, this escalation of doing a round every month is crazy.”
Khosla said he keeps a list of companies that he declined to invest in because of their high valuations but whose business models he deemed sound.
On the other hand, some valuations appear high at first, but the business is so good that “the high valuation is worth it,” Khosla said. For example, Khosla first invested in AI coding startup Cognition three years ago. At the time, the valuation looked steep, but the company’s growth since then has made that investment “well worth it,” he said.