A New Battleground for Giants: Meta Announces Development of a Humanoid Robot "World Model"

Meta, Facebook's parent company and one of the world's top five tech giants, recently officially announced its entry into the humanoid robotics field, elevating it, along with augmented reality, to a core strategic position.

On September 27, 2025, Meta unveiled its humanoid robotics project, codenamed "Metabot," with plans to invest billions of dollars to fully enter this cutting-edge field. The recent news that Ashush Kumar, head of Tesla's Optimus AI team, has joined Meta has further fueled the robotics race among tech giants.

Humanoid Robots: The "Body" of AI

Over the past decade, AI development has primarily focused on breakthroughs at the "brain" level, such as speech recognition, image processing, and large-scale model training. Humanoid robots represent a different future for AI—one that allows intelligence to truly transcend the screen and acquire a "body" capable of directly interacting with the human environment.

AI is the brain, robots are the body. The combination of the two represents the true entry of AI into the physical world. From family companionship to industrial manufacturing, from logistics and delivery to medical care, robots are considered one of the cutting-edge technologies with the greatest potential to transform human lifestyles.

Related institutions predict that by 2030, the global robotics market will reach 1.2 trillion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 22%. This figure clearly demonstrates the broad market prospects and the surge in investor enthusiasm.

The high price paid for robot.com reflects the industry's enthusiasm.

The industry's enthusiasm is also reflected in the domain name market. Earlier this year, Felipe Chávez, founder of the practical robotics startup Kiwibot, announced the acquisition of robot.com.

"Robot" is a core keyword in the robotics industry, representing simplicity, intuitiveness, and universality. Although the transaction amount was not disclosed, industry insiders generally predict the transaction price to be in the tens of millions of dollars. For a startup, such an investment represents not only a long-term strategic investment in the brand, but also a firm bet on the future of the industry.

It's been proven that in emerging industries, core domain names often grow alongside businesses, becoming highly symbolic digital assets. Just as e-commerce relies on the word "shop" and finance relies on the word "bank," in the robotics sector, the value of robot.com is virtually irreplaceable.

robot.ai: The Next Strategic Resource

If robot.com has already been finalized, another domain name with great potential is gradually becoming the focus of market attention: robot.ai.

In recent years, the ".ai" suffix has rapidly gained popularity with the rise of artificial intelligence, becoming the domain name of choice for global tech companies and AI startups. The combination of "robot" and "AI" aligns almost perfectly with industry trends: on the one hand, "robot" represents the entity that executes, and on the other, "AI" represents the driving intelligence. Together, these two truly capture the future of the industry.

Meta's entry into the market has further accelerated the transition of humanoid robots from science fiction to reality; the high price paid for robot.com demonstrates the industry's enthusiasm and potential through market activity. At this juncture, AI and robots are no longer independent concepts; they jointly constitute the infrastructure of future technology.