This is far bigger than people think.

So much advanced equipment is just sitting there in labs, waiting for humans to finally go and make experiments. Which they eventually get round to, sort of, when they can secure funding and when the grad student isn't ill or making mistakes or framing the problem the wrong way.

AI-driven labs can iterate 'good enough' hypotheses way faster than human R&D systems. Automated labs are going to be a major source of discovery.