Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: Investing in the Rise of the Robots

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

On this episode of Animal Spirits: Talk Your Book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are joined by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Derek Yan from KraneShares to discuss: the investment opportunity in humanoid robots, how far away we are from a more robotic world, the implications for investors, workers, an aging population and more.  Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://idontshop.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits Talk, your book is brought to you by Crane Shares. Go to Crane Shares.com to learn more about their rise of humanoid robots ETF. That's ticker COID. It's craneshares.com to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Redhol's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Britholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. What of the dominant investing themes, or I should say, let me phrase it differently, the dominant investing themes over the last couple of decades, it started with the internet, and then I went to mobile.

and then it went to cloud. I don't know if cloud is quite as big as the others, but that was like the cloud took the baton and powered the next to the bull market. And then, of course, it was digital AI, Nvidia, data center is the buildout. And it does seem that very naturally, the next thing coming is, is humanoid robots.

At least that's the pitch. The future is going to be weird, man. And I can see it now. 2032, the S&P at 14,000, making a run to 16,000. They were screaming, well, if it wasn't for these damn robots, the S&P would be back down to 10,000. It is weird to think that people are worried about an AI bubble when the robot stuff hasn't even happened.

And it's, we, how are we to say, like, when this could be a real thing. So that's why we brought an expert on today. So Derek Yon is from Crane Shares. He's a senior investment strategist there. And Crane Shares has an ETF now that is investing in the rise of humanoid robots, which is kind of crazy to think. These are names that you would not pick out on your own. No, I would have thought this would have been like a mag 7 ETF, to be honest.

Like, a lot of these are. I've never heard of most of the names in this fund, which tells you that it is actually going for this stuff. So I met, quote unquote, met the robot down in Miami and interacted with it. I was telling Duncan, do you think the robot remembers me? You're very easy to forget. You're very tired. If I had to see the robot again, I don't know who I am. But the idea that we're going to have these is both scary and exciting because we probably will need them at some point.

To take care of old people. I think it's way more exciting than scary. I guess the scary part would be people saying, oh my gosh, they're going to take all the, we're going to have robots to all the jobs. What are people going to be even for anymore? But the exciting side of things is like, what if in the future we have just too many old people

that need health care? We need help at the hospitals. We need help taking care of old people. We need help around the house, whatever it is. I'm bullish on robots for humanity. I think that it's actually going to come at a good time. Now, is it the next five years, the next 10 years? Remember the, an I robot, it becomes the biggest company in the world.

What's the name of the company? Is it just called I robot? I can't remember. But I do love the bad guy in there, the giant dude with big nose from LA Confidential. Yeah. He's not of that guy. What's that guy's name? James Cromwell.

There we go. But the interesting thing to think about is, is it going to be just one of the Mag 7 companies that takes, is it Tesla or is it Google or one of these company? Or is it just this unknown company we've never heard of that comes from nowhere and goes, oh my gosh, this is the new NVIDIA. This is the company that figured this out. It's a good question. I feel like any, and I'm sort of, you know, pretty much making this up because I don't spend a lot of time in the space. Anytime these companies reach like some sort of promise, they just get bought.

Yeah, you're right. You wonder if they will try to stay independent, but it's interesting. So this is a fascinating conversation for me. The presentation that Cranecher sent us is really interesting. The future is going to be wild. Man, I don't even know what to say. If this stuff transpires, I'm going to let you get a robot first. in your house to like fold your laundry. Okay. Let you have it for like six months before I'm okay. And then, all right, fine. Didn't kill Michael in his sleep.

Can you return your robot if you don't like it? What if you're like, eh, me and my robot aren't getting along? That's true. What kind of personality is I have? I think it's weird that all the robots have to look like humans to make us feel comfortable. Like, why does the robot need a head? It doesn't need one, but it makes us feel psychologically better to think that it looks like a human.

I wonder if you could order a headless, uh, headless robot. Why can't it have like six arms instead of two? Why does it have to have two arms and two legs? I wanted to be like rocky on Project Hummering. Anyway, here's our conversation with Derek Yan from Crane Shares. Derek, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

All right. So we're talking about the Crane Shares global humanoid robotics and physical AI index ETF. The ticker is K-O-I-D. We've had you guys on a lot. And there's usually something, I usually make a joke about the ticker, K-Lip, K-Web or K-Web. What's COID? Where'd that come from? What is this?

Well, it's kind of like a humanoid, right? Like craneshire is humanoid. Yeah. Such a simpleton. Simple, simple, simple. I'm embarrassed. I should have been able to crack that code. So the whole market is resting on the shoulders of artificial intelligence and semiconductors.

And one of the supposed, hopeful, biggest beneficiaries of this AI buildout is a completely new category of robotics. both in, I guess, factories where, you know, not like the human robots, but they've been obviously in place for years and decades now. But the humanoid part of it, am I going to have somebody in my house a metal eye robot type thing folding my laundry? And if so, when? Yeah, I think that's the ultimate format of physical AI, right?

So today's physical AI, I think that's like doing general purpose robotics in a factory. you have like Amazon deploying those logistic robotics. That's potentially be like natural round of physical AI. And you have quadrupad, the dog shape. So in three year, five year, I think the breakthrough in the model is going to allow a humanoid in your home that can do actual work. Today we already seen like company doing that. But like it's not really, I think, one or two year. Down the rail, it may need several years to be that general purpose in your home to doing well.

things. So I got to meet the robot, the crane shares robot when we were in down Miami, meet it, interact with it? I don't know how you call it. So you talk about this idea of physical AI. So I'm just curious, like, obviously robotics have existed, not in this like humanoid form, whatever you call it, but what does AI do that unlocks the ability of these robots to potentially like change the way we interact with them and use them and work with them? Yeah, I mean, like robotic is not new, right? As Ben talked about for 20 or 30 years, is all over the factory. But those robotics are single-purpose, right?

They're caged, kind of like industrial arms, doing specific tasks. And if you want to do another task, you have to program it again, right? So those are hard-programmed, like, single-purpose robotics. But I think a NAST wave of robotics is AI-enabled. So a lot of scientists, a lot of big tech company investing into the physical AI model that allow kind of like the machine to think,

to plan to have visual, to have thinking abilities, so they can do multiple tasks, they can understand the environment, right? So that's kind of a next wave. That's where physical AI is going to play to do like manufacturing smarty, to do logistics to really help us in the service sector, even in our home. So that's where opportunity is totally different compared to single purpose. This is going forward as more general purpose. It just seems like such an impossible thing to replicate the amount of tasks a human being does.

So, for example, you walk into my house and you walk up the steps, and then there's another flight and another flight to my bedroom. And I've got one closet. My wife and I share a closet. it. We've got whites and colors. Do people still separate whites and colors doing laundry? I have no idea. Not a laundry guy. And then there's like things that don't necessarily go in the laundry, things that maybe get, go to the dry cleaner. What if a robot like falls on the steps? I mean, for example, how in the world? So how far away are we? Because Elon keeps talking about this on the calls. And it seems like nobody cares about the cars anymore. That's like an afterthought.

But every call it seems like it's just getting longer and longer for delivery. And actually, I want to talk about this. Tesla is not even the 37th largest holding in the ETF. We'll get into the details. But this general purpose stuff, is this really going to happen? Like, you think, like, yes, it's 100% going to happen. It just might take another 10 years. Yeah.

I mean, like, Elon's always right on a direction. It's always laid on delivery. So that's been the pattern over the last, I don't know, 20 years on EVs on the event space ads. So I think like this is definitely the directional is correct. Right. So we have the similar pattern that people use to train the digital AI, the large-nexed models. Now they train the physical models, right? So the top scientists today, they do the VLA model, the vision language action model or the world models.

so you can actually use the same pattern recognition, same large data set training. The whole framework is already there. That's been successful training in the chatypte or like cloud. So using that framework to apply our 3D three-dimensional world, incorporating action data is well doable. We have seen a great breakthrough over the last two years that we made so much progress compared to,

last 20 years. So if that trend continue, we could see the GP moment for our fiscal AI, right? So if the GPD moment come, you're going to see this, oh, shock, oh, that's like, previously, it's GPT2, now it's GPT3. That makes sense. So when that moment came, everybody's not going to question, oh, this is going to be another 10 years? We're going to see a accelerating progress on the model capability, just as we did in the digital AI models. It's interesting because you guys have a presentation on this, and you talk about the things that robotics could be doing, factories, warehouses, hotels, and hospitals, and even in our homes.

Now, some people look at this and they go, oh, my gosh, these robots are going to take away all the jobs. Other people might look at this and go, actually, we need the robots in the years ahead. Like, we need them to fill a hole because the fertility rates are declining. There's going to be more old people that are going to be dying. And we might actually need these robots. So, like, do you think that there's a time frame where it's like,

actually, the timing of this could end up being perfect for humanity, not like this end game where it's going to just destroy everyone those jobs. I think currently is the right timing, because, well, first I said, like, AI model progresses so fast, and those hardware just because investment into the EVs and smartphones over the last 20 years, the actuators, sensors, batteries become, like, so cheap and capable, right? So we have very good robotics. Then as you said, the aging population, the demand, the shortage of labor is a structural problem.

Not only here in the United States, by Europe, Asia, this is a global challenge for many countries, that eventually you need a solution, right, to keep up the productivity. And of course, as today, there's a lot of repetitive and dangerous jobs out there. that our human is probably not suitable to do. So that's kind of like the easy replacement for humanoid to be there, like, firefighter, right? So we have like cultural pattern now going to those fire and save people's life. So those, like, obvious use cases. Yeah, the use cases are incredibly obvious, too many to name. It feels like the cost is going to be prohibitive, at least at first, inside somebody's home.

I think I've seen estimates of 50,000, 100,000, whatever it ends up being. Do you think that these are going to be born by the corporations to start? Like Amazon is going to start building these humanoid Tesla, and then eventually after a couple of years in training, whatever, like obviously, you know, the mega-meaguelthiest side. Do you see it playing out like that? Yeah, I think this playing out was similar to smartphone in early days. and EVs in, say, 2012, initially, the manufacturing the cost of components are going to be high, right?

Think about like EV, take example, right? The battery cost of, say, CATL went down 90% since coming early days to today. So that drop of cost is enabling the EV to be affordable, right? So we could see where a similar trend happening. We already seen that.

like in actuators, in the detectors hand, in those sensors, in those batteries. Today, those actuators, those like bearings, those reducers, precision control, those like takes most of the cost for building a humanoid, building a quadruped. But I think as the economy of scale continue to happen, we're going to see more affordable humanoid pressure you can on at, say, $20,000. are soon. So I'm curious, I want to get into how you guys end up taking this idea that's potentially far off from the future and then investing in it. But I'm curious like where most of these breakthroughs are coming from because it seems like everyone assumes that all the innovation comes to the United

States, but it also seems like more people are coming around to the idea that, especially since crane shares is such a China-focused investment firm, that a lot of, especially on the manufacturing side of things and technology, a lot of it is coming from places like China and South Korea. like how much of this is a worldwide phenomenon? We believe this is indeed a global phenomenon. I think this is going to be a global demand because we have seen labor shortage across Asia and U.S. But I think differently, right?

U.S., a lot of companies focus on the intelligent side, the model side. You've talked about private leaders, figure AI, like Uptronic, many like companies. are just like bragging their kind of like AI model capabilities, right? The ability to think, to feed, to do actions accordingly. But in China is very different. In South Korea, in Japan, a lot of companies are really the supply chain company or the manufacturing company that can provide very efficient solutions for the hardware.

We kind of see that trajectory for iPhone, for EV. But I think like today, we have seen early shipment coming out of China, right? So last year, there's 20,000 unit of humanoid actually shipped globally. And that's from AGIBod, from Unitary, from UBtech, old Chinese companies. So early days, I think China's been achieving some scalable manufacturing on this. But U.S. is working on, I think, more. the model side, which likely capture more of the value. We're seeing a lot of startups in the US,

actually training their AI models using like Unitrees or a lot of those hardware. So potentially you can have like open source, humanoid platform that leverage the kind of like low cost China manufacturing, but adding a lot of value using the US intelligence part that it can create a piece that's affordable and super intelligent. I want to talk about the actual companies, the stocks inside of the ETF. So I asked Claude to tell me about the combined market cap of the top 10 names, because I was going through this list and I don't recognize any of them.

The top 10 combined market cap as of March 12th, we're recording this on May 4th, but the computer says as of March 12th, according to Claude is $168 billion. And you've got a global portfolio. The top companies from Australia, it's a $12.5 billion market. market cap called Linus Rare Earths. It is the largest rare earth producer outside of China. The next one, you've got rainbow robotics out of Korea. $9 billion market cap.

It says they do humanoid robots. Samsung is the top shareholder at 35%. If you got Doucancorp also out of South Korea. The next one is in the U.S., a company called Regal Rexnerd. Next one is from Taiwan. You got one out of Europe. Teladine, okay, I've heard of that one. But these are all, the point is, if the third,

top 10 combined market cap is $168 billion. And these companies have had a hell of a run. The ETF is up, I think, 50% year over year. But that still sounds tiny. Like, it sounds like the opportunity. Like, is this a $5 trillion opportunity here? Obviously, it's going to be volatile, you know, like startup-y type of investments. But what does the opportunity set look like?

And I know we're projecting here, like, do you think that these are going to be good businesses and gigantic businesses? Or is this going to be like the new category that? like the airplane where it's like, yeah, new amazing invention, biggest piece of shit business is ever, completely uninvestable. I think on near term, the system, those are like established business, right? If you look at the profile, right, Thailand, they used to do like semi-conc doctor testing business, but now they're getting this additional ramp from the humanoid, from the physical AI, right?

So the whole business logic got to be re-rated, got to be rethink about investors. We haven't seen like similarly a lot of those traditional auto companies, traditional semiconductor companies, got to be re-rated because the AI, because the data center build-out, right? So that's kind of like the most hot rant over the last year. So on the near term, because of the ramp up the humanoid, those companies are going to be we rated because they're a business model. For the portfolio side, I mean like we're not investing, say,

MVDA or Tesla or according to their market cap. This is more like diversified, equal-weighted. Most of the value is actually captured by the body, by those actuator provider, bearing provider, harmonic drive, reducers,

a lot of material companies. So it's an ecosystem play that captured exposure more on the manufacturing side or the component side of the humanoid ecosystem. So you're not getting exposure that's really similar to, say, NASDAQ or SMP, but you're getting a lot of international, Europe or Asia-based industrial company that is probably like sounds old, but beneath their like traditional business, there's a transformation is happening.

That's, we believe, over the last three to five years, going to be recognized by, you know, masters. So it's interesting that this is, because a lot of these AI and futuristic ETFs, you look at the holdings and it looks like a NASDAQ 100 ETF, right? Exactly. It doesn't, but yours, yeah, to Michael's point, you look at this and there's a lot of companies in here that I've never heard it before that I don't recognize. Do you think that the winners are going to be these up-and-coming companies or the picks and shovels or whatever and not necessarily the big players? I'm curious how you think about like, are some of these winners going to be, these companies that are not household names right now.

Yeah. So today, a lot of humanoid manufacturers or the brand are still in a private stage, right? Figure AI, that's almost like 40 billion valuation. Appronic, 1X, now Tesla is now shifting. In China, there's Unitary, AGIBot. In South Korea, in Japan, in Europe, there's so many, like, players out there. We think this is kind of like early days for a smartphone. I don't know who's going to be the next iPhone. Early days. EVs, right? Who's going to be the test Tesla? It's hard to bad, like, concentrated, who's going to be the brand owner, but it's easier to think this industry is going to likely to success. We're still in the early stage of the S-curve adoption, but as we entering to the S-curve,

we're going to see the ramp up production and require the whole supply chain to get ready. So investing in the picking shoulders for this industry makes more sense at this stage. stage compared to betting on some like few names that like, oh, maybe it's Rainbow Robotics, maybe is Tesla. We're betting the whole manufacturing side of the business. So I'm curious, like, who do you think are the picks and shovels? So you have this great slide showing the full spectrum of the humanoid value chain. And I wonder where you think the most value will accrue and where, and what's also like the hardest of the three stools of the like to build here. You've got the body.

The brain and then the integrator. Can you talk about those three areas? Yeah. So integrators are the brand, right? As I mentioned, so today, most integrators are private. So several public names, Rainbow Robotics, as you mentioned, backed by Samsung. UBTAX is based in Shenzhen. They partner with BID.

Then you have traditional auto company like Tesla now transformed their business. So why are a few integrators today on public space? on the intelligence part. There's a lot of like just edge computing, a lot of those like intelligence player, technology players that are providing like semis to those manufacturers. That's also about like 20% of exposure.

The majority of the exposure actually is in the body. That's where we believe actually captured most of value. Because you look at the cost of the humanoid today, most of the cost actually come from, the actuator. The actuator, the taxer's hand, the bearing, the boss grooves. So those companies, like, they're the market leaders globally. Harmonic drive, leader drive, San Hua, Tuopu.

You have a lot of, like, even like manufacturing company providing a human oil solution here in the United States, like Jabbil. They partner with Apptronic. Terradan, they actually work with Amazon. They have a unit called a universal robots. So universal robotics, those are the players that people may not know their humanoid side of the business, but actually they get a lot of orders from, say, Amazon or just other humanoid companies. So increasingly, people are going to recognize the value for those units as the growth for humanoid,

likely to double triple. We're starting from very low base. think about only 20,000 units last year, potentially going to 10 million units in a few years. So that's kind of like industry we're betting on. Do you try to take it one step further and bet on a company like Amazon and think about who the biggest beneficiaries are of this? No, we're just focused exclusively on the sort of production of these robots

and then whoever uses them. That's a different story. No, we want to get like what's kind of the purest exposure to bad. on this. That's going to be humanoid, the adoption of humanoid can transfer in their business. Amazon's great, right? But like the contribution perspective is going to be low, right? Amazon is going to save some cost, but whole growth is coming from their, like, say, cloud and e-commerce. But like we think what's kind of like the direct beneficiaries is going to be the companies actually their revenue are going to be.

more than average investor projected, and by a large surprise, that's going to trigger re-value. So we target those companies. Potentially, if, say, like, Tesla's older com, their revenue doubled. The investor caught it by surprise. Oh, how do I think that, right? So is that story similar to a lot of, I think, like now the memory companies or the TPU companies or like optical companies,

those companies got re-rated because the new revenue stream come from the AI data center built out that people don't think it's going to happen. So humanoid side is similar here that a lot of people just ask you the question if the humanoid going to take up. So we believe that as those models progress,

eventually one day the humanoid industry going to ramp up and who's going to be the direct beneficiaries. So those are the basket we targeted. I mentioned the performance of the ETF. I just need to set the record straight. This thing launched in June of 2025. So not quite up 50%, well, up 50%, not quite year for year, but even in a shorter time frame.

But just wanted to note that. There's been a lot of thematics pop up over the years. A lot of things that were exciting that have since fizzled out. The one that comes to mind, at least for me, is the 3D printing revolution that sort of, I mean, I have a 3D printer, my kids play with it, but it's not really a giant industry. Why is human rights not going to face a similar fate?

Well, I think compared to a lot of the niche themes, human noise is a major thing, right? Think about all the resources that you have like, Jensen Huang, you have like Elon Musk, you have all the top AI researchers on Silicon, value that they're putting their resources on. This is something, I think, bigger than digital AI. As Jason Huang mentioned, this is a $40 trillion total addressable market.

Think about the automation for the labor. So, as this is compared to EV, smartphone, and potentially bigger. So if we're going to see, I think of most investors, they are already positioned in the digital AI. And we have the very natural transition from digital AI to physical AI. So when that happened, the opportunity is already there. We, like just as you said, that the performance is already signed of the market is to start to believe in this. So market is always right. At some point, we think, like, as investors getting more attention to this theme, those companies are going to get more money invested by institution.

and Goblin lasters. I took my first Waymo ride in the last six months or so and was blown away. Is a company like Google well positioned for this type of industry? Is there a translation there from those self-driving cars to robotics? Do you think it's completely separate industries? Is there some sort of synergy there? There's a lot of synergies. Actually, like, autonomous driving is also another, like, application of physical AI.

Those cars are eventually, like, autonomous robots. they can, like, see, they can, like, make decisions tonnously. So we're applying the similar trend to the other type of robots, right? Mostly early stage in industrial application, then into the retail and service sector. So we've seen early success of a tonne thriving. So that makes us believe the generalized compatibility is real, right? You are comfortable riding the Waymer. There's a lot of companies now doing a ton of driving that's ready to do mass deployment.

So why not just using the same technologies now in the robots that can be generalized, right? And to do a lot of generalized production in the manufacturing, logistics, and service sectors. So the logic is very clear. The trend is very clear. Pounds of money, tens of billions investment. People are putting their money on this, the stakeholders, the researchers. So when a trillion-dollar company wanted to happen is very likely to happen. So to put it that way, right?

Some crazy statistics from your presentation. This comes from the World Health Organization. Approximately 13.5% of the world's population was at least 60 years old in 2020, and they expect that to increase to 22% by 2050. Bank of America global research is estimating that humanoid robot shipments will surge from 20,000 units in 2025 to 10 million by 2035, which is an 86% Kager. And finally, they're saying the robot population could reach 300 million by 2040. Those are some serious numbers. Yeah.

I mean, just like as Jason Huang said, like we have 40 trillion. total dressable market out there, right? So is the, is a, is a very long-term multi-decade built out to achieve that target. But down the road, like, think about like today, right? You have,

I don't know, one point five billion unit of like vehicles on the road, right? So we cheap that over the decade or a few decades of like EVs. Then, like you have like a four billion

smartphone, right? We built out in like 15 years. So for humanoid, you would think there's 3.5 billion working population right now, today. So around like one humanoid per working class human, you're going to need 3 billion down the road. I think that's the Bank of America Maryland production. So that's not really crazy compared to the EVs and smartphone today. I'm not going to be an early adopter because I said the first person who buys a robot and it gets killed by a robot, you can't blame the robot. You got to blame the person.

So I'm just going to tiptoe into this market a little bit, okay? Because I'm not sure if the robots are going to come after us or not. I want to make sure that there's protection in line. Exactly, exactly. I think that's the risk, right? Similar to the Honda driving, the risk is really regulation, union, a lot of like push back on the deployment. you have similar challenges by now.

Right, this could be a political issue, right? I was joking, obviously, but this is going to be a political issue. Yeah, exactly. I think, like, people's perception on humanoid is still, like, very negative on the Western culture, at least, due to a lot of movies. I grew up in Asia, and the culture is very different, like, where the kids, they grew up watching animation that humanoid and robots are a friends of human, right, help humans.

So you think that the actual adoption will be quick. in places like Asia? I think so because just culturally, people embrace those robots. Like, you've already seen a lot of, like, robots in restaurants and hotels, like airports. So people are like, people love those, like, at least, like, culturally is very, like, a robot-friendly.

I think, like, now in the United States, potentially the adoption first kind of happen in mostly manufacturing side, right? So you potentially have zero. human, so you don't need to worry about how people can push back. You're going to be fully autonomous, right? So a lot of logistics, that's already happening. You probably have some remote oversight for like warehouses in the United States. You're loading a truck, you're like putting in the warehouses, you're sorting the packages. So a lot of those things can be fully automated

already. So that market is huge. On the manufacturing side, I think we are, talking about label shortage here in the United States, how to really we industrialized America again. So that's the ultimate solution to deploy humanoid so we can have a very competitive factory here in the United States. So I think that's kind of like the solutions. There's going to be movies made and real crime podcasts about a humanoid killing a spouse or the husband killing the spouse. It's usually it's always the husband. and blame me it on the robot. They kind of did this, I guess, with the movie Megan.

But I'm predicting an explosion in that category. All right, Derek, appreciate you coming on today. For people that want to learn more about the COID with the K, ETF, how do they get a hold of you? Yeah, people can check crane shares.com slash K-O-I-D for more information about COID. All right. Appreciate the time. Thank you. Okay, thank you to Derek and crane shares.

Remember check out cranechairs. Find more about COID. Email us, Animal Spirits, at the compound news.com.