The next phase of the AI revolution is just around the corner.
The first wave of AI was software. ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude — all of these AI technologies lived in a browser tab. Their actions were robust but mostly limited to activity taking place on a screen: writing emails, summarizing documents, and answering questions.
That’s useful. But it’s also in the past. And most of the big gains have already been made: AI hyperscalers like Meta, Amazon and the like have doubled in share price since the AI-driven bull market began in earnest in late 2023.
The next wave of AI is hardware/ physical AI/ robotics. And the smart money knows it. Robotics VC deal activity just hit an all-time high with $16.4 billion deployed in Q1 2026 alone.
Why is this happening now? Three reasons.
First, labor. Post-pandemic, the cost of human labor is structurally higher and it isn’t coming back down. Wages are sticky. Benefits are expensive. And in a world where nearshoring and onshoring are political mandates, American manufacturers face a simple problem: they can’t find enough workers at a price that makes the economics work. Robots solve that.
Second, the technology finally caught up. For decades, industrial robots were dumb. They could repeat the same motion ten thousand times in a controlled environment, but put something unexpected in front of them and they’d fail. That has changed dramatically. The same AI compute breakthrough that gave us ChatGPT is now being applied to physical systems — giving robots the ability to see, reason, and adapt in real time. Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, Tesla’s Optimus program — these aren’t science projects anymore. They’re working prototypes heading toward mass production.
Third, geopolitics. Washington has made reshoring a national priority. The CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, tariffs on Chinese goods — all of it is designed to bring manufacturing back to American soil. But here’s the problem nobody talks about: you can’t reshore a factory without robots. The math doesn’t work any other way. American labor costs are too high to compete with Asia on a pure wage basis. The only way to make domestic manufacturing pencil out is automation. Washington is essentially mandating a robotics buildout whether it knows it or not.
In very simple terms, the next wave of the AI revolution lies at the intersection of nearly every major macro policy. There is a lot of money to be made here, if you know where to look.
On that note, we just published a new special investment report The AI Plays Your Broker Doesn’t Know About that details three unique AI investments.
Best of all, Wall Street has little to no idea these companies even exist, let alone their AI potential.
We are making just 99 copies available to the general public.
To pick up yours…
Best Regards
Graham Summers, MBA
Chief Market Strategist
Phoenix Capital Research
