🤖 Musk Predicts More Robots Than Humans

Plus OpenAI signs 11 countries and Nadella's new metaphor

January 23, 2026

Reading time: 5 minutes

🗞️In this edition

  • Musk Predicts More Robots Than Humans at First Davos Appearance

  • OpenAI Gives 11 Countries Free ChatGPT for Schools and Infrastructure

  • Nadella Says We're Becoming "Managers of Infinite Minds"

  • In other AI news –

    • 84% of Banks Prefer Open-Source AI Models

    • Moonshot AI Valuation Jumps $500M in Three Weeks

    • AI Startup Raises $480M, Doesn't Mention It

  • 4 must-try AI tools

Davos this week revealed how the biggest players are framing what's coming.

Musk predicts robots will outnumber people. OpenAI is signing governments to dependency deals before competitors arrive. And Microsoft's CEO is redefining workers as managers of machines doing their jobs.

Each story shows something about control. About creating markets before they exist. About locking in countries with free licenses. About reframing job displacement as empowerment.

The language keeps getting more ambitious while the timelines keep getting vaguer.

This edition looks at what leaders say when they're selling the future to governments and investors.

What's happening:

Elon Musk made his first Davos appearance on Thursday, predicting robots will eventually outnumber humans. He spoke with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink after years of calling the event "boring" and elitist.

Musk said Tesla will sell Optimus humanoid robots to the public by the end of 2027. The robots currently perform simple tasks in factories. By late 2026, they'll handle more complex work.

"My prediction is there'll be more robots than people," Musk said. "Everyone on Earth is going to have one and want one. Who wouldn't want a robot to watch over your kids, take care of your pets?"

He predicted AI will become smarter than any individual human by the end of 2026 and surpass collective human intelligence within five years.

Why this is important:

Musk is selling robots before they work reliably. The same pattern as Robotaxis, Full Self-Driving, and Cybertruck. Promise dates, miss them, sell anyway.

BlackRock's Fink had the audience applaud louder for Musk. That's telling. The world's biggest asset manager is positioning Musk as visionary, not unreliable.

The humanoid robot market is $2-3 billion today. Barclays predicts $40-200 billion by 2035. That's massive growth or massive hype, depending on whether the tech works.

Musk attending Davos after calling it an "unelected world government" matters. He needs them now. His companies need global approval for Robotaxis, Optimus, and Starlink expansion.

Comments from the editor:

Musk joked about Trump wanting "a little piece of Greenland." The crowd barely laughed. That's what happens when you show up to an event you've mocked for years.

Selling robots by 2027 sounds aggressive. Tesla showed Optimus folding laundry in 2024, but insiders said humans controlled it remotely. That was teleoperation, not autonomy.

Saying aging is "a very solvable problem" is classic Musk. Make bold claims about everything to keep attention on all his companies at once.

The robots outnumbering humans prediction assumes people want them. Most can't afford $20,000+ humanoid robots for chores when labor exists.

What's happening:

Estonia is embedding ChatGPT Edu into all secondary schools. Kazakhstan gets 165,000 free licenses for schools, colleges, and universities. Greece is deploying ChatGPT Edu across secondary schools with help from the Onassis Foundation.

Norway and UAE are building data centers with OpenAI as their first customer. South Korea is exploring a water-disaster warning system with OpenAI for climate-driven problems.

Each deal is structured differently. Some focus on education access. Others combine infrastructure investment with being early OpenAI customers. The company frames this as helping countries "seize economic opportunities of the Intelligence Age."

Why this is important:

OpenAI is locking in governments before competitors can. Free education licenses create dependency. Once schools adopt ChatGPT Edu, switching to Claude or Gemini becomes harder.

The data center deals are strategic. OpenAI needs computing capacity. Governments want AI infrastructure. Trading first-customer status for local data centers solves both problems.

"Eleven countries" sounds impressive until you realize most AI users are in the US, China, and Europe. These partnerships target smaller markets where OpenAI can dominate early.

Greece's partnership includes an AI accelerator for startups. That's creating an ecosystem where new companies build on OpenAI's platform instead of alternatives. Lock-in at the national level.

What's happening:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced a new metaphor for AI at Davos, telling BlackRock CEO Larry Fink that workers are becoming "managers of infinite minds." He said AI acts as "infinite minds" beside every knowledge worker.

Nadella updated Steve Jobs' "bicycles for the mind" concept. He said AI is now a hundred-fold amplifier of human thinking, not just a simple tool.

He described AI as moving from single assistants like Copilot to agents that can run entire projects 24/7. The shift is from helping with tasks to taking them over completely.

Nadella dismissed bubble fears despite trillions being spent. He said AI is only a bubble if it stays within tech companies. If it spreads to all industries like electricity, it's transformation.

Why this is important:

"Managers of infinite minds" is strategic framing. It makes workers sound empowered when they're actually supervising machines doing their jobs.

The metaphor hides job displacement. If AI handles projects 24/7, companies need fewer people managing them. Infinite minds means infinite workers you don't have to pay.

Nadella's bubble defense is self-serving. Microsoft runs the biggest AI investments. Of course he says keep spending and it's not a bubble.

The electricity comparison matters. When electricity arrived, it didn't eliminate jobs, it created new industries. But AI specifically targets knowledge work. That's different from mechanizing factories.

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The predictions keep getting bolder.

Robots in every home. Governments signing multi-year platform deals. Workers managing infinite AI minds instead of doing the work themselves.

These aren't descriptions of what's happening now. They're visions of what could happen if everyone keeps spending and adopting without questioning.

What matters is whether the reality catches up to the rhetoric. Or whether we're watching the world's most expensive marketing campaign for technology that hasn't proven itself yet.

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