The Startups Developing Robot Hands; OpenAI’s Revenue Hopes

Before we get into Thursday’s column, be sure to read my colleague Sri’s story on OpenAI’s revenue forecasts. The projections go a long way in explaining why investors led by SoftBank think OpenAI is worth $260 billion. While subscriptions to OpenAI’s pioneering ChatGPT will continue to make up the majority of revenue for the next five years, sales from new and unreleased products—including AI agents and what it calls “free user monetization” and other unnamed products—will constitute an increasingly significant portion of revenue, which the company thinks will top $125 billion in 2029, Sri reported. 

Given how quickly OpenAI’s revenue has grown since launching ChatGPT less than three years ago, it’s easy to understand why investors are betting the company will generate about $50 billion in sales in 2029 from its newest products, some of which may not even exist today. Of course, in five years, a lot could happen. Presumably, agents—AI software that takes over browsers to book reservations and other humdrum web activities—will get a lot better. 

As another story we published Wednesday showed, AI agents are still pretty clumsy when it comes to online shopping—or worse. As one ecommerce software founder told Ann: “If that pricing is buried in a JavaScript drop-down, [agents will] make up a price and return the wrong price.” That’s an outcome that will make no one happy.—Laura Mandaro

Now on to the rest of the column…

Humanoid robot hype is in full swing. The latest evidence is Elon Musk’s prediction Tuesday that by 2030 Tesla will be cranking out over a million of its Optimus humanoids—despite the fact that it has only said it was using two of them as of last year.

As the saying goes, in a gold rush, sell shovels. Now startups are trying to capitalize on the humanoid boom by developing robotic hands. In fact, some founders have recently left these bigger robot makers to focus on the parts.