The following is a segment recap from The AI Investor Podcast, where 24/7 Wall St. Analyst Austin Smith and Eric Bleeker debate whether robotics is setting up to be the defining investment trend of 2027. In this segment, they dig into the reported 8,000X oversubscription of Unitree’s upcoming Chinese IPO, the volatility investors should expect on the path to a physical AI economy, and why Regal Rexnord (NYSE:RRX | RRX Price Prediction), a conservative robotics-adjacent name previously highlighted on the show, has become a case study in the patience this thesis will require.
Watch This Episode
The full segment is embedded below. Austin and Eric walk through the Unitree news, the Regal Rexnord post-earnings selloff, and the broader question of whether robotics stocks are the next big investing wave.
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The Big Picture
- This is a segment from The AI Investor Podcast episode titled A New Portfolio Add In Our Most Important Episode Of The Year, hosted by Austin Smith and Eric Bleeker.
- Unitree’s upcoming Chinese IPO is reportedly 8,000X oversubscribed, a signal of just how much appetite exists for pure-play robotics exposure.
- Regal Rexnord, the more conservative robotics play the show recommended, dropped from $220 to $170 after earnings.
- Eric said at $170, “nothing’s changed in my opinion of it”, framing the selloff as unrelated to the long-term thesis.
- Austin’s framing: robotics is real, but it will move on manufacturing timelines, meaning patience and high volatility.
The Robotics IPO Wave Is Already Here
Unitree’s upcoming Chinese IPO is now reportedly 8,000X oversubscribed. That level of demand tells you everything about how investors are positioning for humanoid and general purpose robotics as the next platform shift after generative AI.
One important caveat for US investors: Unitree is a private Chinese company pursuing a listing on a Chinese exchange. It will not be directly available on a US exchange when it debuts, and there is no US ticker to buy. However, robotics-themed ETFs will be able to add the stock, so investors may have exposure to it if they own ETFs with international exposure.
Why Regal Rexnord Was the Conservative Way to Play It
Eric previously recommended Regal Rexnord in the portfolio he manages on the AI Investor Podcast. His thesis for the company in short: the comapny is a fantastic way to get robotics exposure without paying a hyper-growth multiple for a pure play with no revenue. Regal Rexnord makes electric motors, motion control products, and power transmission components, and it has been steadily reorienting toward higher growth end markets.
New CEO Aamir Paul, who started July 1, 2026 as the company’s sixth CEO, framed the opportunity clearly on the Q2 call. He said “the development of solutions in eVTOL, robotics and data center are exciting frontiers where Regal Rexnord can play a meaningful role.” On the same call he added that “If you think about the biggest application of AI and physical AI and the introduction of robotics, the fact that we are such a core part of those systems is terribly exciting… Those are longer cycle things, but it’s great to see us on the ground floor co-engineering those solutions. And those markets will develop slowly until they happen overnight, and we plan to be ready.”
The Automation & Motion Control segment is where the robotics content sits. In Q2 2026, AMC revenue came in at $477.7 million, up 16.2%, with strength in data center, aerospace, and discrete automation. AMC daily orders were up 17.1% year over year, and enterprise daily orders were up 8.8%.
The Earnings Reaction That Went Against the Recommendation
Despite these tailwinds, Regal Rexnord dropped following earnings. Eric flagged on the podcast that the stock dropped from $220 to $170 after earnings, driven by concerns about the company’s legacy end markets. As Eric noted, many of the trends that could cause the company’s shares to re-rate since as modular data center revenue and robotics growth are still only emerging today.
The reported numbers themselves looked solid on the headline metrics. Adjusted EPS came in at $2.99 versus a $2.58 consensus, a beat of 15.68%. Revenue was $1.558 billion versus a $1.578 billion estimate, a miss of 1.25%. Adjusted EBITDA rose 11.2%.
What the market punished was the guidance narrowing and the pacing on the data center opportunity. The E-Pod modular power business, which secured approximately $735 million in embedded switchgear orders in Q4 2025, will only contribute $15 million in Q4 2026 revenue, with the bulk of shipments expected in 2027. Management also flagged a longer timeline to realize productivity gains, a lag in price realization versus inflation, and modest mix headwinds. Full year adjusted EPS guidance was narrowed to $10.35 to $10.85, with the midpoint held at $10.60.
The stock is currently at $175.49, down 17.73% over the past month and down 19.69% over the past two months. The forward multiple sits at 17x, and the average analyst price target stands at $249.
Eric’s Take at $170: Thesis Intact
Eric was direct on the podcast that the selloff did not change his view. He said “nothing’s changed in my opinion of it”, framing the decline as noise around a longer arc. The robotics revenue that investors want to see from Regal Rexnord today is essentially not in the numbers yet. The R&D pipeline and co-engineering work with customers in humanoids, cobots, and surgical robotics are the option value.
That option value is meaningful. AMC first half daily orders were up over 25% year over year, and management noted that nearly half of order growth reflects longer-cycle projects and blanket orders benefiting 2027 and 2028. The 2027 shippable backlog in Industrial Powertrain Solutions is up over 20% versus the 2026 backlog at the same time last year.
Austin’s Warning: Robotics Moves at Atoms Speed
Austin’s contribution to the debate was the pacing warning. He compared the robotics buildout to two earlier waves, drones and self-driving cars, that took far longer to reach commercial relevance than early enthusiasm implied. Austin said, “This feels a little bit like self-driving in that it takes the leap from software speed to atoms speed,” drawing a parallel to Elon Musk’s years of overly optimistic timelines that eventually proved directionally correct.
His bottom line for investors was the patience frame: “just like the long-term demand for drones was up and to the right, you just had to be patient.”
The critical warning from both hosts is that robotics requires the simultaneous convergence of AI models, batteries, manufacturing scale, and materials breakthroughs. Any one of those legs slipping introduces volatility. A reader walking away from this segment should understand this as a multi-year thesis with a wide range of outcomes, and one where a name like Regal Rexnord can decline from $220 to $170 while the underlying industrial logic remains unchanged.
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