Why this veteran capitalist is more bullish on robotaxis than humanoids
Brian Sozzi ·
Executive Editor
Mon, January 26, 2026 at 1:30 PM EST
3 min read
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The investing edge goes to autonomous cars over humanoid robots, said tech venture capitalist Bill Gurley.
"The autonomous vehicle has an advantage, I think, over the autonomous robot in the short run in that the thing you're trying to accomplish and what the technology's doing is fairly deterministic at this point," Gurley said in a new episode of Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast (see video above or listen below).
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The Benchmark partner added there are already examples of self-driving cars and what they can do, whereas the robot market is still trying to find a direction.
"What I know about the autonomous robot market right now is there's a ton of trials with a whole bunch of different like, style warehouses, but they're all bespoke, they're all different," he said. "And so building a product that's going to like really do well against all of those I think is very difficult."
Gurley's claim to fame is an $11 million bet on a Travis Kalanick-led Uber (UBER) in 2011. But other key investments have included Twitter (now X and owned by Elon Musk) and Nextdoor (NXDR). He presently sits on the board of the online retailer Stitch Fix (SFIX).
He has seen it all over the course of his career, from the bursting of the dot-com bubble to the emergence of the artificial intelligence revolution. He even worked on the Amazon IPO.
In his new book, "Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love," Gurley shared several principles to finding success in one’s career. He mixed in experiences from his VC career to drive home the point of not settling for an unhappy job.
Suffice to say, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sees growth opportunities in both humanoids and autonomous cars.
Musk told a crowd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that Tesla (TSLA) has started robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without safety monitors. However, there are reportedly safety monitors in cars trailing those robotaxis.
Musk has been trying to lay the foundation for the mass rollout of an autonomous taxi service, potentially over the next 12-18 months.
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He also said that Tesla may start selling its Optimus humanoid robots to the public by the end of next year. The billionaire has a track record of missed deadlines and has posted on X that the early production of Optimus will be "very slow."
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A new Gartner report shed light on what’s coming on the humanoid front.
Through 2028, less than 100 companies will progress humanoid robot proofs of concept beyond experimentation, with fewer than 20 companies going into production for supply chain and manufacturing use cases.
"I think they [autonomous cars and humanoids] are both tough categories because they have a lot of hardware and a lot of capex," Gurley said.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.
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