ALPHA DHABI’S DEREK NICHOLSON ON WHY THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR AI AND ROBOTICS CAN NO LONGER BE IGNORED

The thought of robots lifting boxes in warehouses, building houses, or taking orders in cafes was once science fiction fantasy that lived in the minds of Hollywood screenwriters. Now, robotics, particularly humanoid robotics, is emerging as a credible real-life solution in many scenarios across society and, according to NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, will become a multi-trillion-dollar global market.

Perhaps an even more interesting proposition is the convergence of robotics and artificial intelligence. What this means is that robotics represents the physical embodiment of artificial intelligence. To be more specific, this is when AI’s capabilities in reasoning, perception and decision-making are merged with machines that can move, manipulate objects and operate in real-world environments.

Instead of AI only living in software and screens, embodied AI allows intelligence to act in all types of real-world scenarios. Obvious examples are robotics being deployed in scenarios or sectors where physical work is intensive, hazardous, and difficult to staff. Think of the likes of mining, construction, logistics or agriculture – humanoid robotics can be the drillers, baggage handlers, fruit pickers, or bricklayers.

At present, we’re also noticing that capital formation is already accelerating around the AI-robotics theme. Venture capital investment reached between $190 – $225bn in AI companies in 2025, marking the first year AI captured a majority of global venture capital.

In humanoid robotics, disclosed rounds surpassed $2.5bn in 2025, and research by Barclays predicts the market for humanoid robotics could scale to over $200bn by 2035.

AI and robotics represent attractive  economic opportunities

From an investment perspective, AI and robotics represent a very strong set of economic opportunities. To put this into context, Morgan Stanley writes that the global labour market is estimated at $30tn, roughly 30 per cent of global GDP. Embodied AI and robotics could potentially automate or augment part of this $30tn pool, which is no small feat.

For the UAE and wider GCC, policy and capital are aligning with speed. Dubai plans to deploy ~200,000 robots by 2032 as part of a strategy to lift robotics to 9 per cent of GDP, while Abu Dhabi’s MGX targets $100bn in AI‑led assets across compute, semiconductors and applications.

Add in the UAE’s fast‑scaling, AI‑optimised data‑centre footprint (for example, Khazna’s 1GW expansion roadmap), and the region is positioning itself as a front‑row beneficiary of embodied AI’s productivity dividend.

These numbers all point to an emerging trend where investors can use robotics and AI to build a durable competitive advantage in productivity, capacity and resilience. For us, at Alpha Dhabi Holding, we firmly believe that Robotics & AI can enable our companies to deliver more efficient and effective solutions.

It’s not just us, this is a wider trend, companies including Tesla, Amazon, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are already piloting humanoid or general-purpose robots in these types of environments.

At the beginning of 2026, at the CES 2026 tech show in Las Vegas, Boston Dynamics unveiled its latest production-ready advanced Atlas humanoid robot, a machine that they have been working on for more than a decade. The demonstration has since gone viral as the robot performed a backflip and self-stabilising – a theatrical but telling sign of control system maturity.

Robot gymnastics aside, I am excited by the vast potential of robotics and AI and in the coming years, I believe these applications will play an integral role in supporting our ambition to scale across sectors. I believe this is an economic opportunity that cannot be ignored.

The writer is the chief strategy and investor relations officer at Alpha Dhabi Holding (ADH)

Read: Embracing AI: The key to unlocking the future of banking and finance

2026-02-19T02:09:38Z