Our Insights

Humanoid robots are capturing the headlines, but they’re on track to represent just a sliver of physical AI’s total value. The focus undersells the breadth of the physical AI opportunity and where competitive advantage is forming, in the software, data, and orchestration platforms that let autonomous systems learn from experience and scale, a layer that could reach $330 billion by 2035.

Join McKinsey senior partner Mark Patel and partner Ani Kelkar as they discuss how physical AI’s economics differ from generative AI’s and what business leaders should watch for as the market evolves.

AI investment is strong and growing even as companies increasingly come to terms with escalating costs – with some organizations seeing LLM spending triple. Business leaders who once left AI decisions to technology teams are now asking hard questions about what they’re getting for all the spend. The real opportunity, however, isn’t in lowering costs but in maximizing returns from agentic AI.

Join senior partners Tanguy Catlin and Lari Hämäläinen as they discuss how to evaluate agentic AI against the fully loaded cost of the work it replaces, what lessons are emerging for better managing costs, and how to better decide where to scale investment and where to pull back.