Physical AI sounds like a contradiction in terms. A computer, but a body?

But for the marketing architects, it’s the latest term of art, a buzzword meant to point us citizens toward a bright and promising technological future.

Back here on earth, the term is maybe most useful as a way to understand how automotive companies are thinking about themselves right now: as tech pioneers. It’s also a handy shortcut to understanding how appetizing the automotive industry is for the companies that make chips—what could be a $123 billion opportunity by 2032, up some 85 percent from 2023. The giant CES consumer tech showcase that just took place in Las Vegas always has its share of goofy robot demos, but this year’s presentations showed how the world of robots, cars, and chipsets are growing ever closer.

First, to define (marketing) terms: “Physical AI” is the way tech developers eventually hope that autonomous systems interact with the real world, by using camera and sensor data to truly understand and reason through what’s going on around them, and perform complex tasks to respond. Physical AI is humanoid robots putting in a day’s work on the Hyundai factory floor, as Google DeepMind, Boston Dynamics, and the Korean automaker announced they would do in the coming months. It’s a car driving itself in complex traffic situations, or taking an arguably more complicated job: seamlessly handing off control between a human driver and a software-powered one. Physical AI lets autonomous systems like cameras, robots, and self-driving cars perceive, understand, reason, and perform or orchestrate complicated actions in the real world.

It is no accident that the companies making the loudest noise about physical AI are chipmakers, including Nvidia and ARM. The former announced a whole new open source line of AI models targeting autonomous systems; the latter debuted a Physical AI division at CES. They stand to make a chunk of change off the trend.

Witness, for example, the parade of autonomy-related announcements at CES, which will all require some powerful computing resources onboard.

Ford says it will sell a system that allows drivers to operate their vehicles without looking at the road in front of them by 2028. The Afeela, a battery-powered collaboration between Sony and Honda, will drive by itself in most situations at some point, date TBD. Nvidia will supply the chips for Chinese automaker Geely’s new “intelligent driving system,” which will eventually transition to what the company calls “high-level autonomous driving.” Nvidia is also involved in Mercedes-Benz’s new hands-off driving system, to debut in the US this year. Eventually, the company says the system should be able to drive between home and work without help. “This is already a giant business for us,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said of self-driving cars during his CES presentation.

“The central brain of the vehicle will now be quantum leaps bigger—hundreds of times as big—and that’s what [chipmakers] are selling into,” says Mark Wakefield, the global automotive market lead at consultancy AlixPartners. “They see a big future in these vehicles.”

No wonder their marketers found a sexy new way to describe it.