EP 059 August 202692 minCONVERSATION

Why The Robots Aren't Coming

Most people with robot opinions never built one. His went under four thousand British floors, in the dark, in the dust.

Tom Lipinski, AIRA Hosted by Mian Khubaib Jim, founder of Codedevza AIRecorded 23 July 2026

Watch on YouTube

YouTube

Insights

01
Tom's view: humanoids are just hardware, and there is no real use case for them yet.
3:38
02
Why he calls the viral humanoid demos "smoke and mirrors": many are teleoperated.
11:51
03
Why he compares Figure AI's $39 billion valuation to Theranos.
19:39
04
How China is quietly winning the hardware war with free factories and zero-interest loans.
22:34
05
Why he expects a bust before the boom.
29:21
06
The coming robot tax.
1:14:32
07
How he lost control of his own company for £50k.
1:22:38

About this episode

Tom gets into why the viral humanoid robot demos are "smoke and mirrors", why he says Figure AI's $39 billion valuation is "Theranos", how China is quietly winning the hardware war with free factories and zero-interest loans, why humanoids failed in Ukraine's trenches, Elon Musk's half-a-trillion-dollar humanoid gamble, the coming robot tax, why he lost control of his own company for £50k, and the AI bubble reckoning he sees coming for OpenAI and Anthropic.

Tom Lipinski has spent over a decade building real robots, and he believes the humanoid boom is mostly theatre, a bubble that bursts before it booms, because the machines everyone is investing in are the ones least likely to work.

The guest

Tom Lipinski

Founder, AIRA

Tom Lipinski is the founder of AIRA, building robots to reshore manufacturing to the UK and re-industrialise the West.