Jensen Huang Calls It the Next Wave of AI. 5 ETFs Built for the Embodied AI Era
Jensen Huang Calls It the Next Wave of AI. 5 ETFs Built for the Embodied AI Era
Publish Date: 2026-05-18 08:45:00
Source Domain: 247wallst.com
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. For investors who want a basket rather than a single bet, five ETFs offer the cleanest way to play it:
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 think of first when they hear “robotics ETF,” and that liquidity matters 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 is exactly what Huang describes when talking about embodied AI: factory arms learning from simulation, da Vinci systems operating in hospitals, and chips coordinating them.
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.
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…
