Foxconn, NVIDIA Partner to Develop Humanoid Robots

Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn is teaming up with American chipmaker NVIDIA to develop humanoid robots in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan.  

Speaking at the Kaohsiung Smart City annual meeting, Foxconn chairman Young Liu revealed the company’s ambitious plans to integrate NVIDIA’s advanced software and hardware technologies to develop these humanoids, as reported by Focus Taiwan. 

The collaboration marks a significant leap in Foxconn’s efforts to diversify its portfolio beyond contract manufacturing in electronics. Liu also highlighted plans to collaborate with Taipei and Keelung in smart city projects, enhancing app development and sovereign AI capabilities.  

The shift toward humanoid robotics aligns with the company’s financial outlook. Liu forecast consolidated sales to exceed NT$7 trillion ($213 billion) in 2025, driven by growing demand for AI servers and robotics applications. 

AI servers accounted for 40% of the company’s server revenue in 2024 and are projected to rise to 50% by 2025, underscoring their role as a key growth driver.  

NVIDIA’s Role 

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has championed the role of robotics in the AI revolution, stating that humanoid robots, alongside self-driving cars, represent the next frontier of innovation. 

With the humanoids market expected to reach $38 billion in the next two decades, creating quality datasets for humanoids to use for imitation learning becomes extremely tedious and time-consuming. 

Huang announced the NVIDIA Isaac GR00T Blueprint at the CES stage, with 14 humanoid robots standing in the background. This blueprint is a simulation workflow for synthetic motion generation, enabling developers to create large datasets for training humanoids using imitation learning.

Jensen called this “the ChatGPT moment of general robotics.”

Source: X

As announced on its official blog, users can now use the Apple Vision Pro to capture human actions in a digital twin. The robot mimics the action in simulation and records it for use. 

Central to this vision is NVIDIA's forthcoming Jetson Thor computing system, expected to debut in early 2025. “Building foundation models for general humanoid robots is one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today,” Jensen said.

Built on NVIDIA's cutting-edge Blackwell architecture, Jetson Thor is a compact AI superchip boasting 208 billion transistors and featuring a high-performance CPU cluster and integrated safety processors.

Meeting Real-World Application

Foxconn and NVIDIA's partnership is emblematic of the broader trend toward embodied AI, integrating perception, cognition, and action into physical entities. 

Advanced datasets, such as AgiBot World’s humanoid manipulation trajectories and large-scale AI models like Robot Era’s ERA-42, are accelerating the development of versatile, intelligent robots.  

David Friedberg from The All-In Podcast also predicted that 2025 will be the year of AI robots. He said, “I think this is going to be the year where we’re all going to look at humanoid robots and autonomous systems and be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this is here.’”

The Road Ahead

With a rich history of deploying robots, such as its proprietary ‘Foxbots’, to automate production lines, Foxconn is positioning itself to expand its robotics expertise into humanoid systems. 

Now, the company plans to extend its reach into sectors like healthcare by introducing humanoid robots capable of more sophisticated interactions and functionalities.  

Previously, the company also partnered with NVIDIA to leverage its EV ambitions and proposed building Taiwan’s fastest AI supercomputer with NVIDIA’s flagship Blackwell. 

In India, the company has partnered with HCL Group for semiconductor operations and announced Project Cheetah, another Foxconn facility for the manufacture and assembly of EV components, as announced by CM Siddaramaiah. This adds to the list of Karnataka Foxconn projects after Project Elephant.

As Foxconn and NVIDIA join forces, the evolution of humanoid robotics stands poised to transform industries, offering new possibilities in manufacturing, healthcare, and beyond. 

With advanced hardware, extensive datasets, and innovative AI models, the partnership signals a future where robots not only mimic human behaviour but seamlessly integrate into everyday life, redefining the boundaries of AI and robotics.