Silicon Valley threw a hot robot party, and the clankers were M.I.A.

This was one of the few robots at Actuate, Silicon Valley's hottest robotics conference.

Katelyn Tucker/Katelyn Tucker At Actuate, a large San Francisco robotics conference, data vendors outnumbered hardware companies.

Robotics funding is surging as physical AI takes off.

FCC restrictions are squeezing the robotics industry, which still relies on Chinese hardware.

At a sold-out conference in San Francisco for people who build robots, the robots were surprisingly hard to find.

This week, 1,500 robotics investors, founders, and engineers packed a cavernous former Army warehouse at Fort Mason, overlooking San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

They came from across the country for Actuate, a conference that bills itself as a middle ground between an academic gathering and a trade show.

A few years ago, a crowd that size would have been hard to imagine.

For much of the past two decades, robotics was a difficult sell in Silicon Valley.

Now it's one of tech's hottest bets, as investors look beyond software for the next wave of AI .

Foxglove CEO Adrian Macneil gives his opening remarks.

Katelyn Tucker/Katelyn Tucker Actuate's own growth mirrors the industry's reversal in fortune.

Its inaugural event in 2024 drew about 250 people.

A year later, 500 people attended.