Jensen Huang has spent the past year declaring that the next artificial intelligence boom will land in factories, warehouses, hospitals, and on highways, where AI gets a body. At CES 2026, he put it bluntly: “The ChatGPT moment for physical AI is here, when machines begin to understand, reason and act in the real world.” Generative AI taught machines to think in language and pixels; embodied AI teaches them to act in the physical world through humanoids, autonomous vehicles, surgical robots, and industrial automation. The scale Huang envisions is staggering: he has publicly put the total addressable market for humanoid robots alone at $40 trillion, a figure that has reoriented how Wall Street thinks about the robotics space. For investors who want a basket rather than a single bet, five ETFs offer the cleanest way to play it:
- Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (NASDAQ: BOTZ)
- ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (NYSEARCA: ARKQ)
- ROBO Global Robotics and Automation Index ETF (NYSEARCA: ROBO)
- First Trust Nasdaq Artificial Intelligence and Robotics ETF (NASDAQ: ROBT)
- ROBO Global Artificial Intelligence ETF (NYSEARCA: THNQ)
These five split into two camps. BOTZ, ROBO, and ARKQ tilt toward the physical hardware that gives AI its body: actuators, sensors, and chassis. ROBT and THNQ lean into the software brains and compute layer that make embodied systems intelligent. Most investors will want exposure to both sides of that divide.
BOTZ: The household-name pure-play
BOTZ is the fund most retail investors reach for first when they hear “robotics ETF,” and that name recognition translates into genuine liquidity when moving size without slippage. The fund concentrates on global leaders in industrial automation, surgical robotics, and AI semiconductors, with core holdings including NVIDIA, Intuitive Surgical, ABB, Keyence, and Fanuc. That mix maps directly onto what Huang describes as embodied AI in action: factory arms learning from simulation, da Vinci systems operating in hospitals, and chips coordinating the whole stack.
The case for BOTZ is structural, though recent performance has been more measured than many investors expect. Shares trade near $36, with a one-year return of roughly 11% and a slightly negative year-to-date figure as of mid-2026. The fund concentrates returns heavily in a handful of Japanese and Swiss automation giants, so it behaves more like a focused industrial-growth fund than a diversified theme play. On June 1, 2026, NVIDIA announced the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot at GTC Taipei, an open platform built on NVIDIA Jetson Thor compute and the Isaac GR00T software stack, combining a Unitree H2 Plus chassis with Sharpa Wave five-finger hands. Several of BOTZ’s core holdings sit directly inside that supply chain.
ARKQ: The aggressive active bet on humanoids and autonomy
If BOTZ is the index approach, ARKQ is the conviction approach. Cathie Wood’s team runs ARKQ as an actively managed fund that invests at least 80% of assets in autonomous technology and robotics companies focused on disruptive innovation in automation, transportation, energy, AI, and materials. The portfolio reads like a who’s who of embodied AI: Tesla at roughly 10%, Teradyne about 8%, AMD above 6%, plus Kratos Defense, Rocket Lab, Deere, and Palantir.
The Tesla weighting is the heart of the bull case. If Optimus humanoids and full self-driving move from demo to revenue, ARKQ carries more direct exposure than any other broad robotics ETF. That bet has paid off recently: the fund has returned roughly 72% over the past year and over 14% year to date, with 39% of the portfolio in industrials and 32% in information technology by sector.
Volatility is the price of that outperformance. ARKQ is concentrated and high-beta, with approximately $2.1 billion in assets and meaningful Tesla single-name risk. When the embodied AI narrative hits turbulence, this fund will fall harder and faster than its passive peers.
ROBO: The picks-and-shovels diversifier
ROBO was the original robotics ETF and still offers the broadest exposure across the value chain. Its modified equal-weight methodology spreads risk across sensors, actuators, compute, and end-market applications, with about 43% in information technology and 46% in industrials. Geographically, the fund leans on the United States at 39% and Japan at 21%, capturing the world’s two most important industrial automation ecosystems.
Current top weights include companies like Harmonic Drive Systems, Hiwin Technologies, Ambarella, Infineon, and Jenoptik, alongside smaller positions in NVIDIA, Rockwell Automation, and Fanuc. That mix represents the picks-and-shovels of embodied AI: the semiconductor test equipment, factory automation, and motion control that every humanoid and autonomous machine depends on regardless of which brand wins the platform battle. With approximately $2.1 billion in net assets, ROBO has returned about 52% over the past year and roughly 22% year to date.
The tradeoff is the flip side of diversification. Because no single name dominates the portfolio, ROBO will lag a concentrated winner like ARKQ in years when one or two stocks run far ahead of the pack. Investors who prize consistency over peaks will find that an acceptable bargain.
ROBT: The balanced AI-and-robotics blend
ROBT tracks a Nasdaq index that deliberately splits holdings into AI “enablers,” “engagers,” and “enhancers,” giving investors both brains and bodies in a single wrapper. The tiered weighting tilts the fund more toward AI software than ROBO or BOTZ while keeping meaningful robotics hardware exposure. That structure sidesteps the question of whether embodied AI’s value will accrue to chipmakers, model builders, or robot OEMs. The honest answer is some of each, and ROBT declines to force a choice.
Performance has been the most muted of the five. Shares trade near $54, up about 19% over the past year but less than 4% year to date. By spreading evenly across tiers, the fund captures less upside when any single sub-theme surges, which explains why it has trailed more concentrated peers during the current run in humanoid and autonomous vehicle names.
THNQ: The overlooked compute-layer pick
THNQ is the unconventional choice on this list, the one most readers will not find on a basic robotics screen. As the AI-pure-play sibling to ROBO, it covers cloud compute, semiconductors, AI software, and applied AI in healthcare and business processes. A humanoid without a foundation model is little more than a mannequin. The training compute, inference chips, and vision-language models that make a robot useful all live inside the names THNQ holds. The scale of that compute buildout is no longer theoretical: NVIDIA’s Data Center revenue reached $75.2 billion in Q1 FY2027, up 92% year over year, driven by surging Blackwell architecture demand across hyperscalers and industrial customers alike.
The market is catching on to the compute connection. THNQ has returned over 54% over the past year and roughly 23% year to date, with a five-year gain of 1,065%. The fund carries approximately $398 million in assets, making it the smallest of the five by that measure, but momentum in AI compute has driven outsized inflows in recent quarters. One caveat worth flagging: THNQ is technically an AI fund, not a robotics fund. In a year when physical robotics underperforms software, it will diverge from BOTZ and ROBO in ways that can surprise investors expecting close tracking.
How to choose among them
The decision comes down to which slice of the embodied AI stack an investor believes will capture the most value, and over what time horizon. Someone who wants clean, liquid robotics exposure and is comfortable with concentrated industrial automation should start with BOTZ. An investor with conviction in Tesla’s Optimus program and a higher risk tolerance will find ARKQ the most direct expression of that view, and the fund’s recent one-year performance reflects how strongly the market has rewarded that bet so far. Those who prefer broad, equal-weight diversification across the robotics value chain belong in ROBO, with its wide coverage of sensors, actuators, and motion control.
ROBT suits investors who do not want to pick between hardware and software and are willing to accept more modest peaks in exchange for a balanced ride. THNQ works best as a complement to the hardware-tilted funds. Pairing it with BOTZ or ROBO gives exposure to both bodies and brains, which more closely mirrors how Huang describes the opportunity, most recently in his June 2026 appearances in Taipei and Seoul, where he called physical AI “truly your time” for manufacturers and mobility companies alike. Embodied AI is a credible multi-year thesis, and these five funds are the cleanest ways to express it without concentrating the outcome on any single stock.
Editor’s note: This update corrects BOTZ’s share price to approximately $36 and its one-year return to roughly 11%, reflecting current data rather than earlier estimates, and corrects NVIDIA’s Q1 FY2027 Data Center revenue growth rate to 92% year over year (the 85% figure applies to total revenue). Additional detail on the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot hardware specification, including the Unitree H2 Plus chassis and Sharpa Wave five-finger hands, was also added from NVIDIA’s official press release.
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