Jensen Huang has spent the past year saying the next artificial intelligence (AI) boom will land in factories, warehouses, hospitals, and on highways, where AI gets a body. 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 some of each.
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: 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. The fund has returned about 30% over the past year and is up roughly 10% year to date, with shares near $40. The tradeoff is concentration: a handful of Japanese and Swiss automation giants drive a large share of returns, so BOTZ behaves more like a focused growth fund than a diversified theme play. On June 1, 2026, NVIDIA announced the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot at GTC Taipei, a fully open humanoid robot built on NVIDIA Jetson Thor compute and the Isaac GR00T software platform. 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. The fund has returned about 72% over the past year and over 14% year to date, with 39% in industrials and 32% in information technology by sector.
The tradeoff is volatility. ARKQ is concentrated and high-beta with $2.1 billion in assets and meaningful Tesla single-name risk. When the embodied AI narrative falters, this fund will fall harder than passive peers.
ROBO: The picks-and-shovels diversifier
ROBO was the original robotics ETF and still offers the broadest exposure across the value chain. The fund’s 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 it leans on the United States at 39% and Japan at 21%, capturing the world’s two most important industrial automation ecosystems.
The fund’s current largest weights belong to companies like Harmonic Drive Systems, Hiwin Technologies, Ambarella, Infineon, and Jenoptik, with smaller positions in NVIDIA, Rockwell Automation, and Fanuc. That mix is the picks-and-shovels of embodied AI: the semiconductor test equipment, factory automation, and motion control that every humanoid and autonomous machine depends on. 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, ROBO will lag a concentrated winner like ARKQ in years when one or two stocks run far ahead of the pack.
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 one 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 will be captured by chipmakers, model builders, or robot OEMs. The honest answer is some of each, and ROBT does not force a choice.
Performance has been the most muted of the five, with shares near $54, up about 19% over the past year but less than 4% year to date. By spreading across tiers, ROBT captures less upside when a single sub-theme surges, which explains why it has trailed more concentrated funds recently.
THNQ: The overlooked compute-layer pick
THNQ is the unconventional choice on this list, and 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. With NVIDIA’s Data Center revenue hitting $75.25 billion in Q1 FY2027, up 85% year over year, the compute buildout underpinning embodied AI is accelerating fast.
The market is catching on. 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. The tradeoff is that THNQ is not technically a robotics fund. In a year when physical robotics underperforms software, THNQ will diverge from BOTZ and ROBO in ways that surprise investors expecting closer tracking.
How to choose among them
The decision comes down to which slice of the embodied AI stack will capture the most value. 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 and a higher risk tolerance will find ARKQ the most direct expression of that view. 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 betting the outcome on any single stock.
Editor’s note: This update corrects ROBO’s net assets from $4.73 billion to approximately $2.1 billion based on current data, updates ARKQ’s one-year return to approximately 72%, adds THNQ’s current AUM of roughly $398 million, incorporates Huang’s publicly stated $40 trillion humanoid robot market estimate, and adds context on NVIDIA’s Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot announcement at GTC Taipei on May 31, 2026, and NVIDIA’s Q1 FY2027 Data Center revenue of $75.25 billion.
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