More people will have a humanoid robot than a car by 2060, says Bank of America

The robot revolution will not be driven by science fiction, according to Bank of America. It will be driven by demographics.

In an analysis report, BofA Global Research projects that the global population of humanoid robots will reach 3 billion units by 2060 — surpassing, in per capita terms, the approximately 1.5 billion cars in the world. By then, the bank estimates that 62% of all humanoid robots, or about 2 billion units, will be inside people’s homes.

Also read: How “The Decade of Robots” paves the way for a trillion-dollar market

It’s an impressive number for a product category that today has virtually zero market penetration, but BofA points to an undeniable economic fact of life in the 21st century as a major motivator: there won’t be enough workers.

The workforce problem robots are designed to solve

The robot revolution will not be driven by novelty. It will be driven by need.

BofA analysts Lynelle Huskey and Vanessa Cook identify aging workforces, persistent labor shortages, wage inflation, and high employee turnover as structural drivers that make humanoid work economically attractive — and point out that this will be true even before humanoids fully match human capabilities.

You don’t need a perfect robot. You need one who shows up for work, doesn’t quit, and costs less than the workers you can’t find.

This pressure is global. In Japan, Germany and South Korea, declining working-age populations have been putting pressure on industry and services for years.

In the United States, wage growth in logistics, warehousing and elder care has outpaced overall inflation.

At the Humanoids Summit 2025, held in December 2025, more than 2,000 executives, engineers and investors came together and reached a straightforward consensus: “The question is just how long it will take.” BofA is now putting a number on that timeline.

From factories to living rooms

Before reaching living rooms, humanoids will spend years on loading docks and assembly lines.

Counterpoint Research data cited in the BofA report projects that by 2027, 72% of all humanoid installations will be concentrated in warehousing and logistics (33%), automotive (24%) and manufacturing (15%).

Retail and service applications account for just 12%. The domestic humanoid is a story of the 2040s. The robot that unloads your truck is a story of 2027.

This industry-first adoption pattern already appears in the agreements being negotiated. Shipping company UPS is in active negotiations with Figure AI to deploy humanoids across its logistics network.

Tesla’s Optimus robot already has paid working hours within the company’s own Gigafactories, with Elon Musk targeting sales to the public by the end of 2027 — although he warned that the launch will be “painfully slow”.

Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas said at Fortune Brainstorm AI in December that physical artificial intelligence will automate “large parts” of factory work within five to ten years, with general-purpose humanoids capable of switching tasks quickly — something traditional industrial machines cannot do.

$4.3 billion and accelerating

The investment tells the story of a sector that has clearly left the research phase and entered the competitive race.

BofA estimates that funding for humanoid robotics has jumped from $700 million in 2018 to $4.3 billion in 2025 — a sixfold increase in seven years.

As of January 2026, there are more than 50 companies actively developing humanoids, with 150 commercial launches already recorded.

BofA projects that annual shipments will rise from 90,000 units in 2026 to 1.2 million by 2030, implying a compound annual growth rate of 86% — a steeper trajectory than the initial electric vehicle market.

The cost curve is the engine behind this acceleration. A humanoid made in China had a materials cost of US$35,000 in 2025; BofA projects that this value will fall to less than US$17,000 by 2030.

Western robots still in the pilot phase currently cost between US$90,000 and US$100,000 per unit to produce, meaning the cost squeeze ahead is enormous.

Norwegian startup 1X Technologies already rents a humanoid capable of operating in homes for US$499 per month, and the Unitree G1 model, from Unitree Robotics, costs US$13,500 — numbers that are already forcing Western competitors to accelerate their own cost reduction plans.

The skeptics aren’t wrong — they’re just outpaced by the numbers

The robot revolution is not without critics, of course. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) roboticist and iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks said in September that Musk’s vision of home robots is “pure fantasy,” predicting that successful robots will have wheels and not look human.

Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School warned in the pages of Fortune last month that panic about job losses caused by robots is premature.

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley researchers remain more cautious about deadlines than their Chinese peers, where government guidelines and industrial scale are accelerating adoption.

These criticisms do not invalidate a 35-year projection. But they highlight what BofA itself recognizes: the path between today’s $35,000 industrial robot and a world with 3 billion units passes through a series of technological, regulatory and economic obstacles that no prediction can fully model.

What the bank says — and what entrepreneurs and experts on the ground confirm — is that demographic pressure is real, capital is already committed and the cost curve has already started to move.

The turn of robots over cars could become the most defining consumer technology story of the next three decades. Bank of America is simply the first to put a date on this.