The latest "Humanoid Robot Pulse" report from Deutsche Bank states that the global humanoid robot market is accelerating, with China, unsurprisingly, leading the race.
"The humanoid robot market is accelerating globally. China is leading in production, with government officials estimating 100,000 units of humanoid robot production in 2026, significantly higher than our expectation of ~40,000 units," analyst Iris Zheng wrote in the report.
The Hong Kong-based Deutsche Bank analyst specializes in Asia-Pacific automation and industrials, providing clients with key updates across the industry:
More color here:
In the US, Agility Robotics utilizes a 75% locally sourced supply chain and aims to reduce the bill of materials (BOM) cost from US$125k currently to US$30k.
AGIBOT and Figure AI have livestreamed their humanoid robots working in factories and warehouses, demonstrating commercial viability.
How to profit:
This rapidly developing market indicates growing component demand, which bodes well for component manufacturers. Within our APAC Industrials coverage, we prefer Hengli (Buy, closing price RMB110.58), Shuanghuan (Buy, closing price RMB42.39), Harmonic Drive (Buy, closing price ¥7,430), and Yaskawa (Buy, closing price ¥5,490). We also highlight Tesla (Buy, closing price US$394.46) and Mobileye (Buy, closing price US$9.43) (through Mentee Robotics) as humanoid robotic OEMs in the US.
The rise of physical AI has prompted Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, to place a major bet on Futronic, an automotive supplier that has adapted its motion-control technology for use in actuators for humanoid robots.
Related:
Professional subscribers can read a lot more on humanoid robots at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.
Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 21:20Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,
The U.S. Supreme Court on July 20 agreed to hear the appeal of an Alaska pilot whose small airplane was seized for attempting to haul beer into a so-called dry jurisdiction where alcohol is banned.
The court’s decision in Jouppi v. Alaska took the form of an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision.
The aircraft was subject to a legal process known as civil asset forfeiture, under which property, including a vehicle, that was used to commit a crime is deemed an instrument of the crime and can be seized.
Civil libertarians and those subject to asset forfeitures arising from criminal convictions—in addition to cases in which a person is merely suspected of a crime—have long complained that the practice can be arbitrary and excessive.
The petitioner, bush pilot Ken Jouppi, argues that Alaska’s plan to forfeit his 1969 Cessna after he unknowingly in 2012 carried beer stowed in a passenger’s luggage to Beaver, a village that bans beverage alcohol, violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines. The state temporarily seized the plane, valued at about $95,000, but it was later returned to him pending the final disposition of the case.
Jouppi said he was familiar with Alaska’s dry village system and that he would not intentionally carry alcohol illegally, but that he does not search passengers’ luggage to look for alcohol. No law required such a search, and besides, doing so would be “invasive and demeaning,” his attorneys at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, said in his petition.
The passenger was carrying Budweiser and Bud Light to give to her husband, who worked in Beaver. As Jouppi loaded the aircraft, state troopers searched it and discovered the beer, saying that at least a six-pack of Budweiser could be seen in a shopping bag.
The state filed charges against Jouppi, his company, and the passenger for the misdemeanor of knowingly carrying alcohol into a dry community. The passenger pled guilty. Jouppi and his company went to trial and were convicted by a state jury. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail with 177 days suspended, along with a $3,000 fine with $1,500 of it suspended, and a term of three years of probation, according to the petition.
The trial court first ruled that the forfeiture of the plane was not allowed under state law because at the time of the offense it hadn’t arrived in Beaver, so the alcohol could not be considered to have been transported there. The Alaska Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the state law required forfeiture “regardless of whether the alcoholic beverages are actually transported toward their destination.”
The case returned to the trial court, which then ruled that the forfeiture constituted an unconstitutionally excessive fine. The state appealed, and the appeals court reversed. Then the Alaska Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the forfeiture was constitutional “as a matter of law.”
The state’s dry-community law was enacted to combat alcohol abuse statewide, and the Alaska Legislature “determined that the harm from even a six-pack of beer knowingly imported into a dry village is severe enough to warrant forfeiture of an aircraft,” the Alaska Supreme Court held.
The forfeiture of the plane was “not grossly disproportional to the gravity of the offense for which [Jouppi] has been convicted and, therefore, the forfeiture does not violate” the Eighth Amendment, that court ruled.
Jouppi’s lawyers urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, saying the Alaska Supreme Court incorrectly emphasized the gravity of the offense, as opposed to the actual conduct of the defendant. The state high court’s standard is also at odds with precedents in its home federal circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the petition said.
By contrast, Alaska urged the nation’s highest court not to take up the case.
The Alaska Supreme Court’s decision was correct and adhered to existing precedent, the state said in a brief.
That court found that Jouppi saw the alcohol in the cargo and that his “general policy of willful blindness weighs against him,” and also that he failed to show that forfeiture would be “unconstitutionally excessive.”
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that a constitutional ban on excessive fines, which Indiana had argued applies only to the federal government, applies to all U.S. states.
The decision overturned a ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court that the state was entitled to keep a 2012 Land Rover LR2 valued at $42,000 that was confiscated from Tyson Timbs.
Timbs had used the vehicle when selling a total of $385 worth of heroin to undercover police, a crime for which he was convicted. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to a year of house arrest and five years of probation, but no prison time.
The new case is expected to be heard in the Supreme Court’s term that begins in October. A decision is likely to follow by June or July 2027.
Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 20:55Amid the broader debate over artificial intelligence's economic disruptions, the healthcare sector is quietly demonstrating some of the technology's most concrete applications. Rather than the job losses feared in other industries, hospitals report AI augmenting physicians, streamlining routine tasks and accelerating innovation in ways that could improve outcomes while controlling costs.
At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, roughly 150 AI models are now in use. A tool called Record Time helps internists distill hundreds of pages of external medical records into searchable summaries, saving five to 30 minutes per patient, according to CNN.
"AI can step in and do a lot of the tedious work that very specialized doctors or medical professionals do to speed up that process - get to more accurate diagnoses, faster so you can treat more people," Jason Droege, CEO of Scale AI, said.
Mayo is also testing AI for early pancreatic-cancer detection, potentially years ahead of conventional diagnosis, and for identifying atrial-fibrillation risks that could prevent strokes. The clinic partners with Microsoft and other firms to train models on its vast trove of patient data.
Radiology, once predicted to be AI's first casualty, tells a similar story of augmentation rather than obsolescence - though the most-cited evidence comes from an interested party. A report from Build American AI - a nonprofit advocacy arm of Leading the Future, the $100 million pro-AI super PAC backed by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI executives - finds the U.S. radiologist workforce in Medicare-affiliated practices grew 17.3% between 2014 and 2023. At Mayo itself, the group says, the number of radiologists expanded 55% since 2016. The organization does not disclose its donors and lobbies for federal preemption of state AI rules, so the figures warrant independent checking against Medicare provider data.
Utah recently became the first state to allow an AI system from Doctronic to renew prescriptions for chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. In the pilot's first five months, the AI recommended approval in 72% of cases, with physicians concurring 91% of the time; it escalated the rest when complications appeared, Forbes reports. The program targets established medications, maintains human oversight and bars controlled substances.
* * * Check out the Build American AI report
Tampa General Hospital estimates that an AI-enabled sepsis-detection system it built with Palantir has helped save 886 lives since August 2022, cutting early sepsis deaths by 68%. The figure is the hospital's own assessment of a system developed with a commercial partner.
In drug development, AI's impact may prove most transformative. A TD Cowen survey of biopharma leaders found executives expect the technology to compress preclinical costs and timelines by as much as 70%, powering in-silico modeling that simulates thousands of experiments rapidly, Axios reports. Respondents expect new drug programs to expand more than 10% in the coming years.
Yet inside the very institutions championing AI, opposition is already brewing.
Mayo Clinic's former Director of Research Operations Traci Tamiko Eto sued the hospital earlier this month, alleging she was retaliated against for raising privacy and oversight concerns around some Mayo AI systems. Mayo Clinic spokesperson Andrea Kalmanovitz said the hospital doesn't comment on ongoing litigation but underscored that it is "committed to the responsible development and deployment of AI, with privacy, security, transparency and compliance embedded throughout our processes."
"Our research and clinical innovation are conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and we remain steadfast in upholding the trust patients place in us and respecting their privacy," Kalmanovitz said in a statement.
Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 20:30