OpenAI early investor Vinod Khosla said most robot startup valuations will be lower by 2030, while some companies that avoid declines will command very high multiples. According to Sina Finance, Khosla also said he expects the robotics sector to reach a "ChatGPT moment" within the next two years and warned that heavy investment and inflated valuations among the hottest robot startups point to a major industry shakeout.

Khosla said his firm, Khosla Ventures, has invested in several robot startups, including Rhoda AI and Aim. He said he still believes the robotics industry's "ChatGPT moment" will produce several highly competitive humanoid robot leaders, and he expects dexterous humanoid robots to be able to learn new industrial tasks after one or two hours of data.

He said OpenAI is his top pick among language model companies that could deliver that breakthrough for robotics, followed by DeepMind and then Anthropic. Khosla added that Meta is also doing some specialized work on its home robot project.

Khosla said Anthropic ranks lower on his list because it has only recently begun working in robotics and entered the field too late to lead the change. He also said leading AI companies are trying to slow model development, which could eventually delay progress in robotics, and that national security would become a key consideration if AI models gained the ability to power military robots.

Khosla said many companies he wanted to invest in were rejected because of valuation, and he described the pace of monthly fundraising rounds as "crazy." He also said some high valuations are justified by strong company quality, citing Cognition as an example of an AI coding startup he backed three years ago.