by Unscarcity

Is scarcity actually ending?

Five gauges tracking whether robots, AI, and cheap energy are delivering on the abundance promise. Updated weekly.

Last updated: February 26, 2026

Overall Assessment
ACCELERATING
4 of 5 gauges show positive momentum
01 ACCELERATING
Robot Deployment
Are humanoid robots actually entering the physical economy?
Accelerating Mixed Stalling
16,000+
units shipped in 2025
up from ~2,400 in 2024
XPeng breaking ground on mass production facility. 22 of 43 tracked companies now at commercial stage. Unitree and AgiBot shipping thousands of units.
02 ACCELERATING
AI Capability
Is AI getting meaningfully better at real-world work?
Accelerating Mixed Stalling
94%
cost reduction per token since 2023
enterprise adoption accelerating
AI agents autonomously handling code, security, and customer service at production scale. Cost per inference dropping faster than Moore's Law.
03 ACCELERATING
Energy Cost
Is energy actually getting cheaper at scale?
Accelerating Mixed Stalling
$20/MWh
solar LCOE (global average)
down 15% year-over-year
Texas about to overtake California in battery storage. Perovskite cells flirting with 30%+ efficiency. Nuclear microreactors entering deployment.
04 ACCELERATING
Capital Velocity
Is smart money flowing into abundance tech faster?
Accelerating Mixed Stalling
$7.9B+
cumulative humanoid robotics funding
$1.2B+ raised in Feb 2026 alone
Spirit AI ($290M), AI2 Robotics ($144M), Apptronik ($520M) all in the last month. Figure AI at $39B valuation.
05 MIXED
Adoption Signal
Are companies deploying at scale, or just running pilots?
Accelerating Mixed Stalling
1 / 43
companies at mass production
22 commercial, but mostly small-batch
Only Unitree at genuine mass production. The pilot-to-production gap remains wide. This gauge stays amber until 3+ companies hit scale.

How we measure this

Each gauge tracks a specific dimension of the abundance thesis using publicly available data — funding rounds, deployment announcements, cost benchmarks, and industry reports. We don't use composite indices or black-box scoring. Every assessment is stated plainly with the evidence shown.

Gauges update weekly alongside the Unscarcity newsletter. Status levels: ACCELERATING (clear positive momentum), MIXED (conflicting signals), STALLING (negative trend). We call it as we see it.

Robot deployment data sourced from Humanoid Index, our directory tracking 43 humanoid robotics companies across 15 countries.

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