Humanoid robots have moved beyond assembly lines. AI-powered machines are being trialed for legal research, financial analysis, and front-line customer service, pushing automation into work historically considered safe from displacement. AI-powered robotics is moving from factory floors into legal research, financial analysis, and customer service. Three exchange-traded funds offer different angles on that shift: the ROBO Global Robotics and Automation Index ETF (NYSEARCA:ROBO), the Themes Humanoid Robotics ETF (NASDAQ:BOTT), and the iShares Future AI & Tech ETF (NASDAQ:ARTY).
Robotics shows up in the market through a few very different entry points, and each fund leans into its own layer of that stack. ROBO spreads its bets across the broader automation ecosystem, from sensors and machine vision to the components that keep industrial systems running. BOTT takes a much narrower path by focusing on the companies building and enabling the humanoid wave. ARTY sits further up the chain, capturing the AI software and silicon that give those machines their intelligence and make the system as a whole useful.
Performance in 2026 shows how investors are ranking those layers. BOTT has climbed about 23% year to date, ROBO is up around 18%, and ARTY leads with a gain of roughly 33%. The spread says a lot about where conviction is strongest right now and how the market is thinking about the robotics stack as it evolves.
ROBO: the automation veteran
ROBO is the longest-running pure robotics ETF in the U.S. market, and its design predates the humanoid story by more than a decade. The investment logic for including it on a humanoid-robotics list is indirect but real: humanoids cannot exist without precision actuators, vision sensors, motion controllers, and the chip-test equipment that validates the silicon inside their heads. ROBO owns the suppliers rather than the platform makers.
That bias shows up clearly in the portfolio, with the ETF’s top weights including Advantest at 5.66%, Intel at 5.28%, KLA at 4.54%, AMD at 4.36%, and Teradyne at 3.87%, as well as industrial automation names like ABB, Rockwell Automation, and Emerson Electric. The semiconductor-test cluster is the part most directly tied to humanoids: every robot brain needs validated AI silicon, and Advantest and Teradyne dominate that niche.
The tradeoff is dilution as these holdings are spread across factory automation, navigation, and chip equipment, making ROBO a very small direct bet on humanoid form factors. A reader looking for a clean introduction to bipedal robots will find ROBO too broad. A reader who believes the picks-and-shovels suppliers capture more durable margins than any single robot maker will find that breadth is the point. ROBO has returned roughly 243% over the past ten years, evidence that the diversified approach has compounded through several hype cycles in the underlying theme.
BOTT: the pure-play humanoid bet
If ROBO is the diversified veteran, BOTT is the concentrated specialist. The Themes Humanoid Robotics ETF was built around a single thesis: that humanoid form factors will become the dominant interface between AI software and physical work, including white-collar tasks like reception, in-branch banking support, and clinical assistance. The fund targets companies whose revenue, R&D pipeline, or strategic roadmap is tied to humanoid platforms rather than general factory automation.
The performance reflects how investors are pricing that thesis. BOTT has returned roughly 98% over the past year, with shares moving from about $27 to almost $52. BOTT is specifically designed for this wave and is up 23.2% YTD. The newer vintage of the fund means a shorter live track record than ROBO, and a narrower roster of holdings concentrates outcomes in the success or failure of a handful of names.
The tradeoff is volatility tied to a thesis that is still maturing. Humanoid revenue at most listed companies is small relative to their total business today, which means BOTT trades partly on actual unit economics and partly on order announcements, prototype demos, and capital-markets sentiment. Investors who want the cleanest available expression of the humanoid theme accept that the fund will likely move further than the sector in either direction.
ARTY: the overlooked software angle
ARTY is the non-obvious pick on this list. Originally launched as the iShares Robotics and Artificial Intelligence ETF under the IRBO ticker, the fund was repositioned by BlackRock toward a broader future-AI mandate. That history matters because ARTY now blends large language model developers, AI infrastructure providers, and AI-adjacent semiconductor names alongside traditional robotics holdings.
The connection to humanoids is mediated by software economics. A bipedal robot capable of handling legal intake or branch banking is mostly a wrapper around language models, vision models, and reinforcement learning systems. The companies building those models capture value from every humanoid deployment regardless of which hardware vendor wins. ARTY adds the AI software companies whose models power the machines.
The fund is also having the strongest year of the three, gaining about 33% year to date and roughly 92% over the trailing year. The tradeoff is purity. Much of ARTY’s exposure has nothing to do with robots at all, and a slowdown in generative AI spending would hit the fund harder than a setback specific to humanoid hardware. Investors using ARTY as a humanoid play are really betting that AI software is the layer where margins concentrate.
Choosing between the three
The three funds are not interchangeable, and the right choice depends on what part of the humanoid build-out an investor wants to underwrite.
- ROBO suits investors who want diversified exposure to the industrial and semiconductor suppliers that any humanoid platform must buy from. The decade-plus track record and breadth of holdings make it the lowest-thesis-risk option, with the tradeoff that pure humanoid upside is muted.
- BOTT fits investors who specifically want the humanoid form factor and are willing to accept narrower diversification and a shorter live history in exchange for the cleanest available exposure. It is the standout choice for anyone whose thesis focuses specifically on humanoids rather than on automation broadly.
- ARTY fits investors who believe AI software and the chips that train it will capture more of the humanoid value chain than the robot makers themselves. It carries the most off-theme exposure of the three, but it has also delivered the largest 2026 return so far.
A reader who cannot decide between them is really being asked which layer of the humanoid stack will earn the highest returns: components, platforms, or intelligence. The three ETFs are a way to express each answer separately rather than blending them into a single bet.
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