Bay Area events note the convergence of AI and robotics

The San Francisco Bay Area is the nexus of the artificial intelligence revolution in the U.S., anchored by San Francisco, with the renaissance of robotics investment and innovation in Silicon Valley. AI is merging with and embodied by robotics here.

For instance, Waymo’s driverless cars are a common sight in San Francisco. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said the future of AI is physical AI, embodied by robotics including self-driving cars.

Recently, The New York Times suggested the possibility of a robotic “winter,” especially for humanoid robots.

However, in the Dec. 10 Public Relation Society of America (PRSA) annual Silicon Valley Media Predicts of the 2025 technology industry and market, Don Clark of the Times mentioned that newspaper has never found a technology it can’t find the dark side of. He noted that The New York Times‘ first mention of artificial intelligence, dating back to around 1953, warned that robots might someday pose a threat to humanity.

Well, we are alive and well—busily developing humanoid robots and embedding advanced AI chips into flying drones, self-driving vehicles, and other autonomous systems.

Media analysts affirm the advent of the age AI

The PRSA event featured a distinguished panel, including:

• Dion Lim of ABC7 Bay Area
• Jon Swartz, previously with Market Watch and USA Today and now with Techstrong.ai
• Rosalie Chan of Business Insider, whose work previous appeared in TIME, The Chicago Report, etc.
• Don Clark of New York Times, previously with The Wall Street Journal. 

Lim discussed autonomous vehicles, highlighting the success of Waymo, its partnership with Uber, and its expansion in San Francisco and beyond to Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, Chicago, Atlanta, and now Tokyo.  Although International Federation of Robotics (IFR) does not categorize autonomous vehicles as robotics; they are no less an embodiment of AI than humanoid developer Figure AI. 

The panel also delved into AI agents and their applications. Swartz has written extensively about AI. He talked about AI “super agents,” where one agent reports to another. Swartz observed that advances in AI agents may not be as rapid as desired, but their trajectory remains promising.

Market and humanoid prospects are still bright

Chan commented on the quiet IPO market of the past year. She predicted a rebound in 2026. While others have speculated about 2025 as a turning point, the AI and robotics sectors remain vibrant despite a somewhat subdued public offering market in 2025.

Following the Media Predict event was the Humanoid Summit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Aaron Prather, who spoke at the event, later posted about the notion of “intentional stance” for AI robotics.

Prather, who is director of the Robotics & Autonomous Systems Program at standards group ASTM International, has also shared his insights on the hype around humanoids, China‘s competitive strategy, and the difference between use case-specific and general-purpose robots.

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Human capital clusters in Silicon Valley and elsewhere

This leads to the importance of human capital, essential to the rapid growth of mobile robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles. Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock, who raised $675 million for the AI robotics startup, recently posted that he is “hiring like crazy.”

Financial capital chases after human capital. The Bay Area’s top universities fuel San Francisco and Silicon Valley’s growth by training engineers and technicians who tackle challenges such as bipedal dynamic, control, and deep learning.

Robotics professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Japan, India, and Switzerland, now include experienced designers from leading companies, professors, and industry executives. They are now working on training and education, not only from content in a knowledge graph ontology sense, but also the epistemology in pedagogy sense.

In addition to theory and understanding, this diverse group is making real progress. For example, they are developing hardware platforms so that students can learn the basics of upper-body versus lower-body dynamics. Other important topics include manual and robotic dexterity, plus degrees of freedom of the neck and hip, all against the fast-changing backdrop of AI.

The AI industry continues to develop

NVIDIA last week announced a significant reduction in the price of its Orin Nano AI chipset. It halved the cost while increasing performance 1.7x to 67 TOPS (trillion operations per second). According to Huang, this chipset can support both general-purpose AI and agentic AI, enabling edge intelligence.

Agentic AI humanoid robots—reasoning mobile robots with anthropomorphic forms—are edging closer to reality. These robots might someday retrieve all known knowledge, reason over long time horizons, and physically respond with agility. Could this be Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation? No wonder Starfleet’s headquarters are in San Francisco.

About the author

Albert Hu, Ph.D., is president and director of education at SuperTech FT, a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to providing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), robotics, and AI education. The company said it delivers “agile upskilling for an agile workforce.”

Special thanks to public relations consultant Michelle Mclntyre for her LinkedIn post, which was helpful in recording the main points of the Media Predict event.