Jay Mason

Finance student @OhioState. High conviction, high risk investor. Beating the market or dying trying. 20%+ target. portfolio is up 23%yr. Not financial advice.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

$Bot thesis:

This is the first time I’m laying out my humanoid robotics thesis publicly, and I own the position I’m about to describe. Average cost $30.

The premise is short. AI on a computer disrupts information work. AI with a body disrupts labor itself.

That distinction is what makes the market worth sizing. Global labor income runs roughly $66T a year, which is IMF world GDP near $126.3T against an ILO labor share around 52%. Capturing one percent of that is $660B annually. Humanoids don’t need to replace every worker to matter.

The demand already exists. ManpowerGroup’s 2026 survey found 72% of employers across 41 countries unable to fill roles, and BLS put all-in private-industry labor cost at $46.15 an hour in December 2025. A robot at $10 an hour costs $20k over 2,000 hours where a human at $40 costs $80k, and it’s available for 8,760 hours a year rather than 2,000.

Form factor matters more than it gets credit for. The physical world was built around human bodies, so a humanoid drops into an existing workflow while most other designs ask the customer to rebuild the facility first.

This has moved past demonstrations. Figure 02 has run 10-hour shifts at BMW Spartanburg, loaded more than 90,000 parts and logged over 1,250 operational hours. Figure has since signed Catalyst Brands for a Reno distribution center, and its BotQ line targets up to 12,000 humanoids a year. Goldman models $38B by 2035, Morgan Stanley north of $5T by 2050. Neither number fully prices what I think is the real prize, which is selling work rather than machines.

The difficulty is access. Figure AI, Apptronik, Dyna Robotics, Dexmate and Standard Bots are all private. $BOT (RoboStrategy) is a Nasdaq-listed closed-end fund built to hold them, which is why I own it.

Where it stands: NAV was $10.51 per share on 6/30/26, up from $7.24 on 5/31, with net assets growing from $146.9M to $248.9M inside a single month. Shares outstanding are near 24.4M after July placements. The stock trades at $27.03, a 157% premium to NAV, down from roughly 390% at the end of May. NAV rose 45% while the price fell.

That premium is also the mechanism. The fund raised about $24M in July at $34 to $36 against $10.51 of book, and capital raised above book lifts NAV per share for existing holders. It runs in reverse just as efficiently.

CEO Andrew Kang bought $10.0M on 7/14 at $36.71, the closing price that day, with no discount. It trades 26% below that now.

The risks deserve equal space. Still 2.6x NAV against a 2.50% management fee. The private marks are illiquid and can go stale, concentration in the top two positions is heavy, and registered resale shares plus the $2B Roth equity line sit overhead as supply. The 52-week range is $19.20 to $59.00. A move from 2.6x NAV back to 1x is a 61% loss before the portfolio does anything. I paid $30 for something now worth $27.03, so I’m not describing that risk from a distance.

My conclusion is that the industry is genuinely crossing from prototype into production, and that $BOT is a venture-style bet wearing a public ticker. Concentrated, illiquid underneath, expensive against NAV, and dependent on management deploying that facility well. I sized it knowing all of that.

Long $BOT at an average of $30. Opinions only, not advice. I’m not registered with anyone. This can lose most or all of its value. Do your own work.

[Standard Bots @standardbots]

Automation is a national imperative.

The hard truth is America is no longer cost-competitive. Sourcing hardware from overseas is 5-10x cheaper than the U.S.

AI-native robots are the essential power tool of the 21st century — how Americans will rapidly rebuild the productive capacity needed to compete at the global level.

This is Standard Bots' central mission: to put essential manufacturing tools into the hands of those who build America.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

It’s nothing new to real researchers in the robotics field that American humanoids are more technically advanced than Chinese humanoids.

Yes china manufactures more. America has a better product and will catch up with manufacturing faster than most realize.

[Jeff Lutz 🔋 @thejefflutz]

😲 🚨 @Tesla_Optimus 🤩🤩

Calcanis: 'I just saw a recent Optimus demo. Blows anything away shown at the World Games in China.

I can tell you this will be the greatest product ever built by humanity'

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@cixliv @grok Just debate me if you want.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@cixliv @grok And yes I called you misinformed.

You said earlier I’m “sadly uninformed” I know every statistic you have said.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

China is to humanoids what China is to phones, they make the large majority of them and dominate manufacturing volume and cost.

The U.S. is to robotics what the U.S. is to the phone market, smaller volume, but higher-value: better software, real industrial performance, and stronger premium/capability edge.

China wins on body count. The U.S. is ahead on the actual product quality and intelligence side.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

You’re still missing the point.

China has the volume and the supply chain right now. Nobody is denying it.
But claiming America is “behind in robotics” is still wrong.

Figure has legit industrial deployments at BMW.

Apptronik is running fleets at Robot Park with Google DeepMind, feeding Gemini Robotics in real time. That’s the data flywheel that actually matters.

Path Robotics locked in a $600M+ deal for autonomous welding on U.S. Navy ships.

Standard Bots is vertically integrating AI-native industrial robots on American soil.
Shipping cheaper humanoids is manufacturing scale, not the same as leading in intelligence, reliability, or critical applications.

You work on humanoids every day, You should know the difference between body count and actual capability. Volume alone doesn’t decide who’s winning.

China isn’t matching any of that: no verified multi-month Western OEM deployment like Figure’s at BMW, no DeepMind-level data flywheel, no $600M+ critical shipbuilding contract, and no equivalent push on domestic AI-native vertical integration.

(You don’t have to debate me, you’re a grown man. Do what you want. But you keep responding… so it kinda sounding like you want to debate it… or is that a poor assumption 🤷‍♂️)

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@cixliv @grok You said America is behind in robotics. That’s wrong. We can debate it if you like. I’m game.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@cixliv @grok If you would like we can hop on a live X stage discuss it dm me if so.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

"I don’t think Americans understand how behind we are in robotics."

That is your statement word for word. You are wrong. Yes we know china has better manufacturing (right now). But what you said was that we are behind. WE ARE NOT BEHIND. look into all the things i talked about because sadly (your misinformed).

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@Figure_robot Now this is the future of data collection.

Fuck being an uber driver, make money by doing YOUR chores!!!! 💰 💵

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@Figure_robot This is a legit way to get through this bottleneck

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@cixliv sadly a single raw statistic doesn’t prove a point alone.

Production volume (especially of lower-cost or early-stage units) is not the same as technological leadership, product quality, reliability, software/AI sophistication, or long-term competitive edge. China has long manufactured the large majority of the world’s smartphones, yet the category-defining products with the strongest ecosystems, highest margins, best software, and technological leadership come from Apple (US) and Samsung (Korea). Chinese brands dominate mid- and low-end volume, but non-Chinese firms have led the high end and captured most of the profits and key IP. Making the most units has never equaled leading the category in quality or innovation. The same distinction applies to robotics: China’s high volume of current humanoid shipments shows real strength in cost and scale, but it does not prove superiority in capability, software, reliability, or next-generation technology.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@Rewkang The future is now.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

I don’t take anything at face value on X. There are almost zero truly trusted sources here. Most accounts are just farming engagement.

I look at actual experts in the field, the people who’ve spent years building and testing these systems, not just knowledgeable observers like me.

A Figure robot climbing steep stairs while coordinating arms and legs in real time is a far more impressive engineering achievement than a robot that can dance, run, or backflip for the camera.

One is useful capability. The other is mostly spectacle.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

A lot of “X Gremlins” just post something to get interactions for their account. If you genuinely think that what is happening at a company like figure is behind a backflipping Chinese robot, I hate to break it to you but the research you have done is incorrect.

These communist country’s try to put on a spectacle that is mostly just a circus. 🤡

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@farzyness Just wait.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@wallstengine @ChrisCamillo all over this!!!

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

If the market isn’t green it has to be red. And if the market was green every day or every week. We would all be billionaires.

[Jay Mason @JayMason3131]

@adcock_brett This is very impressive. But it does show that people who think we are going to see these robots in our homes within the next 6 months are just wrong. Nothings wrong with extending a timeline 24 months.