Dear Reader,
This is Simmy Adelman with Behind the Markets.
Today I want to talk about one of my two favorite topics.
Financial scams.
I may consume a bit too much content on financial scams so maybe I’m overly-skeptical… but a recent article I read really highlighted something that’s been bothering me for a while now.
The Robot Hype Is Getting Out of Hand
A few weeks ago, Figure AI ran an 81-hour livestream of their robot sorting packages in a warehouse.
Ten million people watched it.
The company said there was zero teleoperation — every action coming directly from their Helix-02 AI system, completely autonomous.
And immediately, critics started noticing something.
The robot kept tilting its head in a very specific way.
The same way a teleoperated robot tilts when a remote human operator turns to look at something…
Figure AI's CEO went on Bloomberg and said the head movement was just the robot clearing its arm's pathway — and that it happens the same way every time.
But the LIVEstream seems to contradict his words.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe not.
But here is the thing.
This is not the first time we have been down this road with Figure AI.
The TIME Magazine Cover That Told a Different Story
In October 2025, Figure AI launched the Figure 03 with a slick six-minute video showing it folding laundry, loading a dishwasher, tossing a ball to a dog.
It made the cover of TIME Magazine's Best Inventions of 2025 issue.
A TIME reporter was there in person watching the live demo.
The robot dropped a piece of laundry twice in a row and couldn't pick it back up.
An engineer with a litter-picker quietly grabbed the fallen clothes and moved them behind the machine, out of sight.
TIME's own reporter noted that Figure's CEO admitted the robot would not be ready for home use at launch.
It made the cover of TIME anyway.
Figure AI Is Not Alone
1X Technologies launched their NEO robot for housekeeping demos.
Their own documentation revealed the robot was being remotely controlled by a human using a VR headset during at least one demo.
They called it "Expert Mode."
Tesla's Optimus robot had a December 2025 incident where it appeared to take off a headset mid-demonstration and then fell and powered down — a teleoperation artifact so obvious that people noticed immediately.
Ironically, Elon Musk questioned Figure AI's autonomy on X — while his own robot was under fire for the exact same thing.
The pattern is industry-wide.
Most humanoid robot demonstrations rely on heavily staged conditions — simple objects, controlled lighting, no time pressure.
A blend of scripted behavior, teleoperation assistance, and AI planning.
Not the full autonomy being sold to investors and the public.
The Honest Assessment
Look — I am not saying physical AI is not coming.
It absolutely is.
Figure AI's robots are actually deployed at BMW's factory in South Carolina doing real work.
That is genuine progress.
But here is what is true right now.
Real commercial deployments are still narrow and tightly controlled.
Tesla Optimus has no external customers yet — all projections are internal.
The robots that can do laundry in a demo still drop it in front of reporters.
The ChatGPT moment for robotics is coming.
But we are not there yet.
The Smarter Way to Play This
Here is the problem with betting on humanoid robot companies right now.
You are buying the promise of a technology that is real but not yet commercially proven at scale.
That is a very different thing from buying the infrastructure that the entire physical AI revolution will run on — regardless of which robot company wins.
The defense contractors building AI-powered drones and autonomous weapons systems…
The data center companies handling the enormous compute requirements that physical AI demands…
The energy companies powering the entire buildout...
These are the investments I’m more interested in making.
They aren’t bets on which robot company gets the demos right.
These are investments in the foundation that every robot — from every company — will be built on.
I will see you tomorrow.
All the best,
Simmy Adelman
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Written by Simcha Adelman