Humanoid Robots & Physical AI
The humanoid supply chain, module by module — brain, senses, joints, hands, motors, battery
The humanoid build-out mapped onto the robot itself — the brain, the senses, the joints, the hands, the motors, the battery, the simulation stack, and the integrators shipping whole robots. Click a part of the robot to see which US-listed companies live there. Honest gaps flagged: dexterous hands and battery cells have no clean US-listed pure play (the leaders are private or listed in Asia). Curated structure; live delayed prices from public data. Not investment advice.
The robot, module by module
Click a part of the robot (or a module chip) to see the US-listed companies in that module.
Brain — AI Compute & Models
The robot's brain: embedded robot SoCs and the foundation models that drive behavior. NVIDIA's Jetson Thor + Isaac GR00T stack is the de-facto platform, Qualcomm is building the challenger ecosystem, Google supplies frontier robotics models — and nearly all of it is fabbed at TSMC.
No US ticker: Physical Intelligence · Skild AI
Brain — AI Compute & Models
The robot's brain: embedded robot SoCs and the foundation models that drive behavior. NVIDIA's Jetson Thor + Isaac GR00T stack is the de-facto platform, Qualcomm is building the challenger ecosystem, Google supplies frontier robotics models — and nearly all of it is fabbed at TSMC.
Jetson Thor robot computer + Isaac GR00T humanoid foundation models — the de-facto robot-brain platform.
Dragonwing robotics compute platform + the Arduino acquisition — building the challenger robot-developer ecosystem.
DeepMind's Gemini Robotics models run on third-party humanoids; investor/partner in Apptronik's Apollo.
Fabs the leading-edge robot SoCs (Jetson Thor is Blackwell-based) — the silicon chokepoint of the stack.
Eyes — Vision & Sensing
How a humanoid perceives the world and its own touch: camera image sensors, depth/ToF, robot lidar and six-axis force/torque sensing. The module with the strongest, most verifiable US-listed coverage.
Machine-vision image sensors + Hyperlux ID depth sensors aimed at robotics and industrial automation.
World's leading image-sensor maker; global-shutter CMOS is a staple of robot vision.
Edge-AI vision SoCs running onboard vision-language models on delivery robots.
Digital lidar shipping into warehouse robots and Serve's sidewalk fleet; added Stereolabs robot stereo cameras.
Robot lidar (JT series) shipping at scale into humanoid makers including Unitree.
ATI six-axis force/torque sensing (incl. the humanoid-specific Varo) + encoders and frameless motors for joints.
Joints — Actuators & Precision Reducers
ChokepointA rotary humanoid joint = frameless torque motor + precision reducer (strain-wave/cycloidal) + encoder; linear joints add planetary roller screws. The reducer is the industry’s biggest chokepoint, dominated by Japanese and Chinese suppliers — Timken’s Cone Drive is the only scaled US-listed harmonic-gearing play.
Kollmorgen frameless servo motors + Portescap/Thomson motion brands marketed directly for humanoid joints.
Cone Drive harmonic gearing + Spinea cycloidal drives — the only scaled US-listed play on the humanoid reducer chokepoint.
Precision thin-section bearings for robot-arm joints — a bearings-content play.
Servo-actuation specialist; its smart actuators powered the IHMC Nadia research humanoid.
Hands — Dexterous Manipulation
The hardest, highest-value subsystem: tactile, force-sensitive dexterous hands. There is NO pure US-listed hand maker — the leaders are private (Shadow, SCHUNK, PSYONIC, Sanctuary) or in-house (Tesla, XPeng, Figure). The honest US-listed exposure is sensing content.
Strain-gage force sensing that lets robots feel; disclosed initial humanoid-robot orders from multiple developers.
ATI force/torque sensing enables compliant grasping at humanoid wrists; also supplies end-effector hardware.
TMR and small-form position sensors targeted at high-precision robotic hands.
Motors & Motion Control
Locomotion and joint-level motion control: torque-dense motors plus the semiconductor content in every joint — motor drivers, magnetic position and current sensing, 48V power stages. Several US chipmakers now publish humanoid-specific product lines.
Motor-driver + magnetic position-sensor ICs in robot joints, plus power management for humanoid SoC platforms.
Publishes a dedicated humanoid line: 48V motor drivers, multi-axis position and current sensing.
Jetson-Thor-based humanoid/AMR development platforms pairing its sensing + motor-control silicon with NVIDIA compute.
Frameless/slotless torque motors with a dedicated humanoid-robot motion line.
Miniature motors, leadscrew actuators and gearmotors across surgical and industrial robotics.
Battery & Power
Energy for multi-hour shifts: high-density cells, packs, and power conversion down to 48V joint rails. Cells are Korea/China-dominated — there is no US-listed humanoid cell supplier. The US angle is power semiconductors plus speculative high-energy-density cell makers.
GaN power-stage and integrated motor-drive reference designs for humanoid joints.
High-density 48V power-delivery modules with a dedicated robotics vertical.
Silicon-anode cells with leading energy density — the closest US-listed high-density cell angle.
GaNSense motor-drive ICs positioned for compact humanoid joint inverters.
Simulation & Robot Software
Where humanoids are born and trained: physics simulation, synthetic data, digital twins and autonomy software. NVIDIA Isaac Sim/Lab is the de-facto training standard; Synopsys now owns Ansys multiphysics; Rockwell wires Omniverse digital twins into real factories.
Isaac Sim/Lab on Omniverse — the de-facto humanoid training stack feeding the GR00T model pipeline.
Owns Ansys multiphysics simulation (acquired 2025) used to engineer actuators, plus the EDA behind robot SoCs.
Emulate3D digital twins on NVIDIA Omniverse; also owns the OTTO mobile-robot line.
AI autonomy software retrofitting intelligence onto existing arms and drones (the renamed Sarcos).
Integrators — Whole Robots
The companies shipping complete robots: Tesla's Optimus and XPeng's IRON humanoids, warehouse-scale systems (Symbotic), cobots and AMRs (Teradyne), sidewalk robots (Serve) and service humanoids (Richtech). Most humanoid leaders remain private or foreign-listed. Production timelines are company targets, not facts.
Optimus humanoid built fully in-house (chip, actuators, hands) — still R&D-phase by Musk's own framing.
IRON humanoid with in-house chips, joints, hands and a solid-state pack; mass production is a target, not yet reality.
AI case-handling robot systems deployed across Walmart's US distribution network.
Owns Universal Robots collaborative arms + MiR autonomous mobile robots.
Uber-spun sidewalk delivery robots scaling a commercial fleet — embodied AI, not humanoid.
Service robots including the ADAM humanoid on NVIDIA Isaac / Jetson.
Curated structure · live delayed prices from public data · for reference only · not investment advice