The Economics of Robot Brains: What Robot Compute Costs and Where It Runs

Robotics and physical AI create compute demand across model development, onboard robot computers, and servers running deployed fleets. Bank of America forecasts 1.2 million humanoid shipments by 2030, driving significant annual spending on AI modules like NVIDIA Jetson. Meanwhile, the industry is navigating where robot "thinking" happens, with major development commitments such as Figure's multi-billion dollar deal with Nscale scaling up infrastructure needs. Open article →