3. Potential investing opportunities in robotics and physical AI
While humanoid robots often capture the public’s imagination, Kalra believes the potential uses and investing impacts for robotics extend much further. “I think of it as physical AI,” he says, describing a category that includes autonomous vehicles and other AI-powered systems that can sense, navigate, and interact with the physical world.
In many ways, that future has already arrived. Autonomous vehicles and taxis are currently operating on public roads in several US cities. Kalra points to these as early examples of AI moving beyond the digital world and into the physical one.
The biggest near-term opportunity, however, may arrive in industrial settings rather than inside people’s homes. Factories, warehouses, and distribution centers are increasingly using robots to move goods, sort inventory, and perform repetitive tasks. While developing humanoid robots remains a priority for some companies, Kalra believes deploying robots safely in homes remains a much more complex challenge. “It’s relatively easy to have a robot in a controlled environment. It’s much more difficult in the home, where you have pets and kids,” Kalra says.
From an investment perspective, Kalra believes some of the most attractive opportunities may lie beyond the robot manufacturers themselves, many of which remain privately owned. Instead, he focuses on the companies supplying the semiconductors, sensors, and software that make physical AI possible.
While the commercial opportunity is emerging first in warehouses and factories, Kalra says household robotics could still be a longer-term opportunity. Today’s robotic vacuum cleaners and autonomous lawnmowers automate individual tasks, but he expects more capable robots to eventually assist with a much broader range of household chores.
4. Potential investing opportunities in the “virtual cell”
AI could eventually help scientists answer one of biology’s biggest unanswered questions: why human cells behave the way they do. Eddie Yoon, who manages the Fidelity® Select Health Care Portfolio (
At the center of Yoon’s thesis is the concept of the “virtual cell”— a computational model that aims to simulate how human cells function, interact, and respond to disease or potential treatments. Yoon believes advances in AI, combined with increasingly sophisticated analytical tools, could bring that vision closer to reality.
Yoon compares the opportunity to the genomics revolution of the 1990s. Just like the internet transformed computing, the human genome project transformed biotechnology, though it took years and cost billions of dollars to accomplish. Yoon believes virtual cells could prove to be just as consequential for biology.
Realizing that vision will require more than increasingly powerful AI models. It also depends on a new generation of life science tools capable of analyzing individual cells, proteins, and biological tissues in far greater detail. Yoon believes the life science tools industry, to which his fund allocated nearly 24% as of July 31, 2026, is likely to be among the earliest beneficiaries as AI helps researchers better understand human biology. “That’s the industry group where you’re going to see these green shoots turn into revenue,” he says.
Yoon believes these advances could fundamentally change the way new medicines are developed. “There’s going to be just a waterfall of investment that opens up in that space,” he says, as researchers gain a deeper understanding of human biology and uncover new opportunities for drug discovery.
Although Yoon believes building a virtual cell is still 5 to 10 years away, he expects investment opportunities to emerge much sooner as computing capacity continues to expand. Many of the experiments scientists hope to perform today remain challenging simply because there is not enough computing power available. As that constraint eases, he believes AI could help researchers better understand human biology, opening the door to new approaches to drug discovery and biotechnology.
