Industrial automation is the quiet, decades-old business of making factories run with fewer humans in the loop. It is less flashy than a humanoid robot, but it shares most of the same parts, and that overlap is exactly where Brownstone Research’s “Elon Musk’s NEW AI Masterplan” pitch draws its energy.
The pitch promises three “secret” stocks that could “unleash enough wealth to make every household in America $2.38 million.” Its applications leg is onsemi, a company whose bread and butter is industrial and automotive power silicon. That makes the industrial automation angle a natural lens for judging the whole thesis.
What Industrial Automation Covers
Industrial automation spans the motors, drives, sensors, and controllers that run a modern factory. Conveyors, robotic arms, pumps, and presses all need power electronics to move precisely and efficiently, and sensors to tell the control systems what is happening in real time. None of it is glamorous, but it is the backbone of manufacturing.
The investment appeal is durability. Automation spending tends to be steadier than consumer spending, because factories keep buying components to stay competitive on cost and quality even in a slow economy. That makes the sector a favorite hiding place for dependable cash flows.
The Power Angle
Every automated machine is ultimately an electric motor, and every motor needs power chips that can switch current quickly and waste as little heat as possible. The pitch’s power angle rests on this simple fact: as automation spreads, the demand for power silicon grows with it.
onsemi is the second-largest power chipmaker in the world, and its silicon feeds industrial energy infrastructure alongside automotive drivetrains. That is the concrete foundation under the promo’s more speculative robot claims, and it is worth separating the two.
Where Automation Meets Robotics
The connection the pitch leans on is that a humanoid robot is, in a sense, mobile automation. The same power chips that drive a factory arm drive a robot’s leg, and the same image sensors that guide a car guide a robot’s eyes. That is the bridge from onsemi’s industrial franchise to Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot.
It is a reasonable bridge. The physical AI argument is that machines which can perceive and act will eventually outnumber fixed factory robots, and when they do, the same power and sensing suppliers stand to benefit.
The Timeline and the Overlap
The honest complication is timing. Today onsemi’s revenue is overwhelmingly automotive and industrial, not robots, and the Optimus program is still years from volume production. The editor’s robot framing has been part of the pitch for more than a year already, and the company’s own numbers have not yet shown a robot-driven inflection.
That means the industrial automation angle is best understood as the dependable, in-hand business, while the robot story is the option on top. Both are real, but they carry very different timelines.
The Fine Print Worth Reading
Two numbers in the ad deserve scrutiny. The claim that a chip-equipment maker could be “on the receiving end of up to $500 billion in 2027 alone” is aimed at ASML, not onsemi, and it does not survive contact with reality, since ASML’s annual revenue is only about $30 billion. The “39 hedge funds are investing” line is filler, not a signal.
For onsemi itself, the honest read is a quality franchise trading at about 18 times forward earnings with a roughly $28 billion market cap, and a tease price of $71.67 that simply matches the current price. That is a fair price for an industrial and automotive power chipmaker, with a free option on robots rather than a guarantee of one.
That is the part of the story worth underlining. Industrial automation is the business that is actually printing money for onsemi today, while the robot narrative is the story that might pay off later. The two are often confused in these pitches, and separating them is the difference between owning a theme and owning a headline. A factory robot arm already needs the same power chips and sensors as a humanoid, and factory automation has been a reliable, growing market for decades. If the humanoid robots never arrive, the industrial and automotive business still stands on its own. That is a useful mental test for any automation stock caught up in a robot promotion.
The other tailwind is energy efficiency. Regulators and factory owners both want machines that do more work per unit of electricity, and the fastest lever is better power electronics. Motors and drives that used to run continuously are being replaced with variable-speed versions that throttle precisely, and every one of those upgrades carries more semiconductor content. That trend is already underway and does not depend on robots at all, which is why the power angle holds up on its own merits.
In short, the automation story is real and already underway, the robot story is real but still early, and the power angle sits squarely in the middle, earning money today while holding an option on what comes next.
Ready to see the research? Click here to view the Elon Musk’s AI Masterplan presentation.
NewsletterVetter is an independent publication. We receive compensation from some of the services we review through affiliate links. Nothing on this site is investment advice. Always do your own research.