Texas Instruments has put a price tag on the humanoid robot boom — at least for its portion of it. The semiconductor manufacturer expects each humanoid robot to carry between $500 and $1,000 worth of chips, and it also anticipates that robotics production will increase in 2027. Chip content per unit is the metric that lets component makers translate robot shipment volumes into semiconductor demand, which is why suppliers are defining their roles in the category before those volumes arrive.

Where the Money Goes Inside a Robot

The company is positioning three product families for the opportunity: gallium nitride (GaN) power devices, real-time microcontrollers such as its C2000 series, and precision analog components. Together, the three families span the core electronic workloads of a humanoid: delivering power to its actuators, controlling motor motion in real time, and handling the analog functions around them.

GaN is a semiconductor material that can switch power on and off faster and with less waste than traditional silicon. TI's GaN power stages, including the DRV7167 and its LMG series, are designed for motor joints running at PWM frequencies above 100 kHz. According to the company, these GaN parts also produce lower losses than silicon MOSFETs.

TI is targeting a sweet spot of 48V and 1 kW for these joint designs.

The company has also published two reference designs: TIDA-010979 targets robot joints, while TIDA-010992 targets robot hands. Both use C2000 microcontrollers and integrated drivers for multi-axis control. Reference designs of this kind are a standard tool semiconductor suppliers use to turn interest into design wins, giving engineering teams a validated starting point built around the vendor's own parts.

Partners, Customers, and Robots on the Factory Floor

TI is already supplying components to Apptronik, one of the companies building humanoid robots.

In March 2026, TI announced a collaboration with NVIDIA. The work integrates TI's mmWave radar sensor, the IWR6243, along with its real-time control technology, into NVIDIA's Jetson Thor platform. The goal is 3D perception for humanoid applications, with a focus on safety and low-latency sensing. The companies demonstrated the setup at NVIDIA GTC 2026.

TI has also been deploying UBTECH Walker S2 humanoids on its own semiconductor production lines, a move dated to around late 2025 or early 2026 — effectively making the company both a supplier to and a user of the technology, with firsthand exposure to how the hardware holds up in a real manufacturing environment. UBTECH, in turn, plans to increase its use of TI components. With TI anticipating a step-up in robotics production in 2027, these moves — the GaN and C2000 product push, the published reference designs, the NVIDIA integration, and its own in-house robot fleet — are positioned ahead of the ramp the company expects.

Source: CryptoBriefing