AI didn’t win because it was “cool.” It won because private capital hit escape velocity. From 2015 to 2020, funding in AI grew nearly 7×, then more than 150B flowed in by 2022. Private capital made AI inevitable and public markets simply followed. Once capital commits, narratives form and liquidity arrives. The result was massive: Big Tech added 6T in market cap and foundation model companies jumped from seed to 30B valuations. Early looked early… until it wasn’t.
Robotics is now in that same moment, almost exactly where AI stood in 2016, but with even stronger fundamentals. A global labour shortage of 85M workers by 2030. A market growing from 40B to 260B. Exploding demand for automation across defence, logistics, manufacturing, ocean clean tech, healthcare and more. Smart money is already rotating in quietly. The narrative will catch up later.
At SwissBorg we’ve been tracking this shift closely and we are very bullish on this narrative. Robotics fits perfectly with long term, high impact innovation that early stage capital should target.
A great example is
@the_small_thing, building autonomous marine robots with real world impact and a scalable model. The same pattern is forming. If AI was the last meta, robotics is the next one. And the rotation has already begun.
Proud to be an advisor for this project.