Everyone is trying to figure out which humanoid robot company is going to win Tesla, Figure, Boston Dynamics, Agility, 1X, Apptronik, Unitree and no one can agree. But there is a way to invest in the humanoid robot boom without picking a single winner: buy the companies that supply the actuators. According to Morgan Stanley's Humanoid 100 report and its widely cited teardown of Tesla's Optimus Gen 2, actuators the motors, gears, screws, and reducers that make a robot's joints move account for roughly 56% of the total bill of materials of a humanoid robot. On Optimus specifically, the legs alone (thigh, calf, and feet) come to about $21,000 out of an estimated $55,000 build cost, or 38.6% of the entire machine. Those legs are essentially a stack of linear actuators using planetary roller screws, each priced at $1,350 to $2,700 per unit. Every humanoid robot on the market today needs somewhere between 28 and 78 of these actuators to function. That means the companies making the highest-p...