AI Is Leaving the Cloud. Here's Who Gets Paid When It Does.

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For the better part of three years, the Physical AI narrative — the idea that AI would move off the cloud and into the physical world, powering robots, wearables, autonomous vehicles, and smart devices — played out like every great tech story does: loud, early, and mostly theoretical.

Elon Musk stood on stage and told us Optimus robots would soon be doing our laundry. Venture capitalists competed to fund the most humanoid-looking thing they could find. CNBC ran breathless segments about the robot revolution. And the stock market assigned billion-dollar valuations to companies whose most impressive product was a press release and a demo reel.

That was then. This is now.

The Proof Points Are Piling Up