Is the Robotics Market growing now?
In our robotics market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
The robotics market is growing now. The strongest evidence comes from a much larger industrial installed base, expanding warehouse and medical robotics, rising service-robot deployments and double-digit revenue growth at several established robotics companies.
Industrial robotics itself is no longer growing at anything close to its historical pace. Global factory installations were almost flat in 2024, but annual deployments remain roughly two and a half times higher than a decade ago and the operating fleet still expanded about 9%.
China is doing a surprising amount of the work behind the global industrial number. Chinese installations rose around 7% in 2024 while installations across the rest of the world fell close to 7%, leaving the headline global market almost unchanged.
Service robotics is becoming a more selective market. Logistics, professional cleaning and security robots are expanding quickly, while hospitality and agricultural robots declined, suggesting buyers are moving money toward applications where the economics already work.
Warehouse robotics is one of the clearest examples of robotics becoming infrastructure rather than experimentation. Amazon already operates more than one million robots, while companies such as Symbotic and DHL continue to expand large commercial deployments.
Medical robotics has an unusually strong economic model because revenue continues after the machine is installed. Intuitive Surgical combines a growing installed base with rising procedure volumes and recurring instruments-and-accessories sales, giving the category much deeper commercial evidence than most emerging robot markets.
Growth is also visible in company financials rather than only shipment statistics. FANUC, Intuitive Surgical, Symbotic and Teradyne recently reported double-digit robotics revenue growth despite operating across very different parts of the market.
AI is already making robots more useful, but mainly by improving specific workflows rather than creating general-purpose machines. Route coordination, perception, planning and adaptation inside warehouses and factories are producing measurable value today.
Humanoids have finally crossed from demonstrations into early commercial use. BMW's production deployment and UBTech's humanoid revenue make the category harder to dismiss, but its physical installed base remains tiny compared with industrial, logistics and medical robotics.
The biggest mismatch is between investment and deployment. Robotics funding has accelerated far faster than robot installations or established-company revenue, so the market is genuinely growing while venture investors are already pricing in a much larger future market than customers have proved so far.
This market map, featured in our robotics market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the robotics market
Is the robotics market actually growing right now?
Yes. The global robotics market is growing now, but the strongest growth is coming from a mix of established industrial robots, warehouse automation, medical robotics and newer AI-driven systems rather than from humanoids alone.
We need to be careful with the word “robotics” because several very different businesses sit underneath it. Factory robots already operate by the millions. Professional service robots move goods, clean buildings and work in hospitals. Consumer robots sell by the tens of millions, mostly as specialized home devices. Humanoids are only starting to enter real workplaces.
Those categories are currently moving at very different speeds.
The latest complete International Federation of Robotics data counted 542,000 industrial robots installed worldwide in 2024. That was almost flat from the year before, so mature factory robotics was hardly exploding. Yet the number of industrial robots actually operating rose 9% to 4.664 million.
Outside factories, the picture was faster. Professional service-robot sales grew 9%, consumer service robots grew 11%, and medical robot sales jumped 91% in the IFR dataset. More recent company results point the same way: Intuitive Surgical increased quarterly revenue 19%, Symbotic 22%, Teradyne's robotics business 33%, and FANUC's annual robot-division revenue 15%.
So today's robotics market is clearly growing, with one important caveat: the growth is spread unevenly across several robot markets, while investor excitement is running much faster than physical deployment.
Are factories buying a lot more robots than they used to?
Very clearly. Industrial robot demand is now roughly two and a half times where it was ten years ago, even after several years of slower growth.
According to the IFR's latest complete global dataset, factories installed about 542,000 industrial robots in 2024. Ten years earlier, the number was around 221,000.
Annual installations increased roughly 145% over that decade, equivalent to about 9.4% compound annual growth. More than 500,000 industrial robots have now been installed globally in each of the last four reported years.
The installed fleet makes the change easier to see. There were 4.664 million industrial robots working in factories at the end of 2024, almost 9% more than one year earlier. Roughly 400,000 additional robots therefore joined the operating stock in a single year after retirements and replacements are taken into account.
Recent growth has been much slower than the decade-long average, but today's baseline is completely different from the robotics market of ten years ago. Half a million annual factory deployments has become normal.
| Industrial robotics measure | Latest evidence |
|---|---|
| Annual installations 10 years earlier | ~221,000 |
| Annual installations in 2024 | ~542,000 |
| Increase over 10 years | ~145% |
| Approximate 10-year CAGR | ~9.4% |
| Robots operating worldwide | 4.664 million |
| Installed-base growth in 2024 | ~9% |
As this chart shows, and as featured in our robotics market deck, search interest in robot costs has increased significantly
Is industrial robotics accelerating again now?
Industrial robotics appears to be entering another growth phase, although we do not yet have enough global data to call it a new boom.
The latest complete worldwide figures were almost flat. IFR counted 542,076 installations in 2024, only 0.1% more than in 2023 and about 2% below the record set two years earlier.
The regional picture was weaker than the global number suggests. Asia grew 5%, while Europe fell 8% and the Americas fell 10%. Automotive robot installations dropped almost 7%. Electronics recovered by roughly 2.5% and became the world's largest robot-buying industry again.
More recent U.S. data is encouraging. Preliminary IFR figures show American industrial robot installations rising 11% to 38,000 units in 2025 after the previous year's decline. Food-industry robot adoption jumped 30%, while automotive installations were roughly flat.
The market looks like it is moving out of its 2023-2024 pause. “Recovery” fits the evidence better than “boom” for now. A full global 2025 installation dataset will tell us whether the U.S. rebound also happened across Europe and Asia.
Is China carrying the global industrial robotics market?
Yes. China has become so large that it can turn a weak year elsewhere into an apparently stable year for global industrial robotics.
China installed approximately 295,000 industrial robots in 2024, according to the IFR. That was a record, up about 7% from 276,288 the year before. China alone accounted for 54% of every industrial robot installed worldwide.
We get a much more revealing picture when we remove China from the total.
Global installations were roughly 541,000 in 2023. Subtract China's 276,288 installations and the rest of the world bought about 265,000 robots.
The following year, global installations reached roughly 542,000 while China bought 295,000. That leaves only about 247,000 installations for every other country combined.
Industrial robot installations outside China therefore fell close to 7% while Chinese installations increased around 7%. The global market looked flat because China effectively absorbed the decline elsewhere.
China is also taking more of its own robotics market. Chinese manufacturers supplied 57% of robots sold domestically in 2024, up from 47% one year earlier and roughly 28% across much of the previous decade.
That changes the competitive picture quite dramatically. China is now simultaneously the world's biggest robotics customer, its largest deployment market and an increasingly powerful supplier of the machines themselves.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest robotics market report.
This chart, featured in our robotics market deck, shows annual venture capital investment in robotics startups
Is the U.S. robotics market really growing again?
Yes. U.S. industrial robotics has returned to growth, and the latest rebound is spreading beyond car factories.
Preliminary IFR data shows 38,000 industrial robots installed in the United States in 2025, up 11% from roughly 34,200 the previous year.
Automotive remained the largest buyer with approximately 13,500 installations, yet that number actually fell 1%. Food manufacturing was much more dynamic, with installations jumping 30% to around 3,000 units. Metal and machinery and electrical-electronics were also around 3,000 installations each.
That mix gives us more confidence than an automotive-led rebound would.
Industrial robotics in the U.S. has historically depended heavily on giant carmakers making large capital investments at the same time. These days, food producers, electronics manufacturers, warehouses and other industries are adopting robots for jobs that were previously difficult to automate economically.
The United States still has plenty of room left. IFR puts U.S. manufacturing robot density at 307 robots per 10,000 workers. Germany has 449, Japan 446 and South Korea 1,220. Even after decades of automation, the American manufacturing base remains far from the global frontier.
Are service robots growing faster than factory robots?
Yes. Professional service robots are currently growing faster than traditional factory robots, but the strong applications are becoming much easier to distinguish from the weak ones.
The IFR recorded more than 199,000 professional service robots sold in 2024, up 9%. Factory robot installations were essentially flat over the same period.
Logistics is by far the largest professional category. Robots used for transportation and logistics represented more than half of professional service-robot sales and grew 14%.
Professional cleaning robots grew 34% to more than 25,000 units. Security and search-and-rescue robots increased 19%.
Other applications struggled. Hospitality robot sales fell 11% despite remaining above 42,000 units, while agricultural robot sales dropped 6% to roughly 19,500.
That dispersion is useful. Customers are already sorting real use cases from weaker ones. Moving standardized goods through a warehouse is proving easier to automate profitably than many agricultural or hospitality jobs.
The business model is changing too. IFR says the professional Robot-as-a-Service fleet grew 31% to more than 24,500 units, far faster than outright robot sales. Leasing and usage-based pricing lower the upfront cost of trying a robot and make it easier for customers to expand only after a deployment works.
| Professional robotics category | Latest unit trend |
|---|---|
| All professional service robots | +9% |
| Logistics and transport robots | +14% |
| Professional cleaning robots | +34% |
| Security/search-and-rescue robots | +19% |
| Hospitality robots | -11% |
| Agricultural robots | -6% |
| Robot-as-a-Service fleet | +31% |
This chart, featured in our robotics market deck, breaks down Figure’s playbook in robotics
Is warehouse robotics already a big real business?
Absolutely. Warehouse robotics has already moved far beyond pilots and has become one of the biggest commercially proven robotics markets.
Amazon gives us the clearest sense of scale. The company has deployed more than one million robots across more than 300 facilities worldwide. A fleet that large belongs to logistics infrastructure rather than experimental robotics.
Amazon is now using its DeepFleet AI model to coordinate movements across that fleet. The company expects the system to improve robot travel efficiency by 10%. Even a modest percentage improvement becomes meaningful when it is applied across one million machines.
Independent robotics suppliers show that customers beyond Amazon are spending serious money too.
Symbotic, which builds highly automated warehouse systems, reported $721 million of revenue in its latest quarter, 22% more than a year earlier. The company had 77 systems under deployment and expects its next quarter to reach roughly $760 million to $780 million of revenue.
DHL has also deployed thousands of robots and spent more than €1 billion on automation across its contract-logistics operations over a three-year period. Its relationship with Boston Dynamics includes plans to deploy more Stretch robots for container unloading.
Warehouse robotics currently gives us one of the cleanest combinations in the industry: large installed fleets, repeat deployments, measurable productivity improvements and rapidly growing supplier revenue.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest robotics market report.
Is medical robotics becoming one of the fastest-growing robotics markets?
Yes. Medical robotics is growing very quickly, and surgical robotics already has the scale and recurring revenue that many newer robot categories are still trying to reach.
The IFR recorded close to 16,700 medical robots sold in 2024, up 91% in one year. That growth rate probably overstates the sustainable long-term pace because the category includes several younger robot types growing from small bases.
Intuitive Surgical gives us a better picture of established demand.
In its latest reported quarter, Intuitive generated $2.89 billion of revenue, up 19% year over year. Worldwide da Vinci procedures grew approximately 15%, while procedures using its Ion robotic bronchoscopy platform grew around 36%.
The company placed 468 new da Vinci systems during the quarter versus 395 one year earlier. Its da Vinci installed base reached 11,710 systems, up 12%, while the Ion installed base reached 1,096 systems, up 21%.
Those robots also generate revenue after installation. Instruments and accessories brought Intuitive $1.73 billion during the quarter, up 18%. Hospitals keep buying consumables as procedure volumes rise.
That recurring component makes medical robotics unusually attractive. The customer buys or leases the robot, surgeons perform more procedures on it, and each additional procedure creates more consumable revenue. The result already looks much more like an established medical-device platform than an emerging hardware experiment.
This chart, featured in our robotics market deck, shows annual funding in robotics startups
Are established robotics companies actually making more money now?
Yes. Revenue at several major robotics businesses is currently growing by double digits, which is much stronger evidence than rising startup valuations.
We checked businesses serving very different parts of robotics.
FANUC's robot division generated ¥378.6 billion in its latest fiscal year, up 14.9%. Demand was particularly strong in China, including EV-related and general manufacturing customers.
Intuitive Surgical's latest quarterly revenue grew 19% to $2.89 billion as surgical procedures and system installations increased.
Warehouse automation company Symbotic grew quarterly revenue 22% to $721 million and moved from a $21 million quarterly net loss one year earlier to $55 million of net income.
Teradyne's robotics segment, which includes Universal Robots and MiR, generated almost $100 million in its latest quarter, up 33.4%. Its robotics revenue for the first half of the year reached $191 million, almost 33% above the same period the previous year.
These companies sell factory robots, surgical systems, collaborative arms, autonomous mobile robots and warehouse automation. Seeing growth across all four makes the current robotics expansion harder to dismiss as a single-category boom.
| Robotics business | Latest revenue growth |
|---|---|
| FANUC Robot division | +14.9% |
| Intuitive Surgical | +19% |
| Symbotic | +22% |
| Teradyne Robotics | +33.4% |
Is AI already making robots more useful?
Yes. AI is already improving real robot operations today, although the biggest measurable gains still come from fairly specific tasks.
Amazon's DeepFleet is a good example because it operates across a fleet of more than one million robots. Amazon says the model can improve robot travel efficiency by 10% by coordinating routes and reducing congestion inside fulfillment centers.
Symbotic applies machine learning to highly automated warehouse systems where robots move inventory through dense storage environments. Its latest quarter included 77 systems under deployment and 22% revenue growth, giving us a commercial example of AI and robotics being sold together at meaningful scale.
Humanoid deployments are beginning to test the same idea in less structured environments. BMW's Figure 02 pilot used a humanoid to handle sheet-metal components inside an actual vehicle plant. The robot accumulated about 1,250 operating hours and moved more than 90,000 components.
The useful change now is that robots can rely more on perception, learning and adaptive planning and less on perfectly predetermined movements. That can reduce engineering work and expand the number of jobs worth automating.
There is still a huge gap between that progress and a robot that can walk into an unfamiliar workplace and reliably perform almost any job after a verbal instruction. Most of the economic value currently comes from making specific robot workflows more flexible.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest robotics market report.
This chart, featured in our robotics market deck, compares the main business model options for warehouse AMR robotics providers
Are humanoid robots finally becoming a real market?
Yes, but humanoid robotics is still an early commercial market rather than a mass market.
BMW now gives us something more useful than a polished demo. During a roughly ten-month deployment at its Spartanburg factory, Figure 02 worked around 1,250 hours, moved more than 90,000 sheet-metal components and supported production involving more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles.
BMW has since continued humanoid testing with newer systems and another robot platform in Germany. Manufacturers have clearly found enough value in the first experiments to keep going.
UBTech provides unusually useful revenue evidence from China. Its 2025 annual report shows RMB820.6 million of revenue from full-size embodied humanoid robot products and services, up from just RMB35.6 million the year before. Humanoids represented 41.1% of UBTech's RMB2.0 billion total revenue.
That is a major jump, although one company should never be used as a proxy for the entire market.
Capital and production plans remain much larger than current deployments. Apptronik has raised more than $935 million in its Series A and is building training facilities and commercial deployments around Apollo. Other humanoid companies are raising similarly large rounds before they have anything close to the installed base of industrial, warehouse or medical robots.
Humanoids have crossed into genuine commercialization. Their current scale is still too small to explain most robotics growth, and the next test is much harder: repeat orders after customers have measured the economics of the first deployments.
Is robotics funding running ahead of the actual robotics market?
By a huge margin. Robotics investment is currently growing much faster than robot installations or established robotics revenue.
Crunchbase counted $15 billion of global robotics startup funding in the whole of 2025. By late June of the following year, robotics startups had already raised $18.8 billion.
That partial-year amount was already 25% above the previous full year and roughly 33% above the $14.1 billion raised during the venture boom of 2021.
Individual financings explain how quickly the numbers have risen. Apptronik's Series A has reached more than $935 million. Huge rounds have also flowed toward humanoid, embodied-AI and general robotics companies across the U.S. and China.
China alone had attracted $5.6 billion of robotics startup funding across 176 deals by mid-May, according to Crunchbase, already above the $4.3 billion Chinese robotics companies raised during all of 2025.
The latest broader physical-AI numbers make the capital shift even more obvious. Crunchbase counted $47.4 billion invested across 521 physical-AI deals during the first half of 2026, almost four times the $12 billion invested during the second half of 2025. That category extends beyond robotics, so we should not treat the entire $47.4 billion as robot funding, but the direction is unmistakable.
Compare that with the operating market. Industrial robot installations recently grew around 0%. Professional service robots grew 9%. Strong listed robotics businesses are generally growing revenue somewhere in the teens to low thirties.
Investors are pricing a much faster future than customers are currently delivering.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest robotics market report.
This chart, featured in our robotics market deck, breaks down revenue across customer segments in the robotics market
Could China make robots dramatically cheaper?
Yes. China's robotics manufacturing scale is already pushing prices down and could open many applications that previously made little economic sense.
The first change is happening in industrial robotics. Chinese manufacturers captured 57% of their domestic industrial-robot market in 2024 after averaging roughly 28% over much of the previous decade.
That creates a huge local production base over which suppliers can spread component, engineering and manufacturing costs.
Humanoids are showing an even more aggressive version of the same pattern. Chinese companies are already selling research and entry-level humanoid platforms at prices that would have looked extremely low only a few years ago. At the same time, large Chinese manufacturers are investing in actuators, motors, sensors, batteries and robot production lines.
Cheaper hardware could matter more for market growth than spectacular improvements in robot intelligence. A robot that costs half as much does not need to replace as much human labor before the economics work.
We should also expect brutal price competition. If average robot prices fall faster than unit sales rise, manufacturers can ship many more machines without producing equivalent revenue growth. That is especially relevant when comparing Chinese unit-growth claims with the financial performance of robotics companies.
For buyers, though, cheaper robots widen the market. Tasks with weak economics at $100,000 per robot can suddenly become interesting at $30,000 or $20,000.
Is robotics growth broad enough to keep going?
Probably yes. Robotics demand now comes from enough different industries that the market is less dependent on one automation cycle than it used to be.
A decade ago, the simplest mental model for robotics was a large industrial arm welding cars. Automotive still matters enormously, but current growth is coming from several places at once.
Electronics overtook automotive again as the largest industrial-robot customer in the latest complete global data. U.S. food-industry installations jumped 30%. Logistics robots grew 14%. Professional cleaning robots grew 34%. Intuitive's surgical procedure volumes rose around 15% to 36% depending on the platform. Symbotic is installing large automated warehouse systems while Amazon already operates more than one million robots.
Some parts of robotics are also weak, which makes the overall picture more believable. Agricultural service robots fell 6%. Hospitality robots fell 11%. Industrial deployments declined sharply in Europe in the latest global dataset. Teradyne's robotics revenue fell 15.5% in 2025 before rebounding strongly during the first half of 2026.
Customers are discriminating between applications rather than buying anything labeled “robotics.”
The strongest use cases today tend to have repetitive physical work, expensive labor, structured environments, high utilization or a clear safety benefit. Warehouses, factories and operating rooms fit that description particularly well.
As robot prices fall and AI reduces the engineering needed to handle variation, more jobs should cross that economic threshold. That gives robotics several possible growth engines even if humanoids take longer than investors expect.
This chart, featured in our robotics market deck, shows how home cleaning robot technology has evolved over time
So, is the robotics market growing now?
Yes. The robotics market is genuinely growing now, and the evidence is much stronger than the humanoid hype alone would suggest.
The mature industrial market gives us the baseline. Annual factory robot installations have more than doubled in ten years, more than 4.6 million industrial robots are already operating worldwide, and the latest U.S. figures show installations rebounding 11%.
The faster growth sits around that base. Professional service-robot sales are rising, logistics automation already operates at enormous scale, medical robotics is growing rapidly, and several very different robotics companies are reporting double-digit revenue growth.
China adds another powerful driver. The country now buys more than half of the world's industrial robots, Chinese suppliers have taken the majority of their home market, and huge manufacturing capacity could keep pushing robot costs lower.
Humanoids add real upside, but we would still treat them as an emerging layer of the market. BMW and UBTech show that commercial activity is becoming measurable. Current deployments remain tiny compared with industrial, logistics, medical and consumer robotics.
The clearest excess is funding. Robotics startups have already attracted more capital in part of 2026 than they raised during all of the previous record year. That pace has run far ahead of robot installations and robotics-company revenue.
Our conclusion is strong but specific: the robotics market is growing today, while the idea of a universal robotics boom goes too far. Established robotics is expanding again, several newer categories are growing much faster, and humanoids are starting to become commercial. Investors are simply betting on that transition happening much faster than customers have proved so far.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest robotics market report.
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether the robotics market is growing now by looking at the evidence that most directly reflects real economic activity: robot installations, operating fleets, customer deployments, procedure volumes, company revenue, application-level growth and startup funding.
We do not treat robotics as one homogeneous market. Industrial robots, professional service robots, warehouse automation, medical robotics, collaborative systems and humanoids are at very different stages of maturity, so we assess them separately before drawing a broader conclusion.
For the industry baseline, we prioritize the latest complete International Federation of Robotics datasets. Where newer global figures are not yet available, we use more recent regional data, company financial results and disclosed deployments as directional evidence rather than pretending they replace the full global dataset.
We give more weight to robots actually installed, systems working in production, procedures performed and revenue generated than to announced production targets or forecasts. Funding is included because it shows where investors expect growth to come from, but we compare it with operating-market growth rather than using capital raised as proof of customer adoption.
Aggregate figures are broken apart when they hide an important underlying movement. That includes separating China from the rest of global industrial installations, looking at individual U.S. customer industries, and comparing growth across logistics, cleaning, hospitality, agriculture and medical robotics.
Key sources include the International Federation of Robotics World Robotics 2025 reports, the IFR's global industrial robotics data, service-robot data, and preliminary 2025 U.S. installation figures. We also use Amazon's robot-fleet disclosure, Symbotic's Q3 FY2026 results, Intuitive Surgical's Q2 2026 results, FANUC's FY2026 results, and Teradyne's Q2 2026 filing for current commercial performance.
For humanoids and investment activity, key sources include BMW's Figure deployment data, UBTech's 2025 annual report, Apptronik's Series A disclosure, and Crunchbase's reporting on global robotics funding, robotics investment in China, and physical-AI funding.
In our robotics market deck, we identify pain points entrepreneurs should prioritize
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