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We are delighted to share the eighth report in our Industry Primers series, this one on the global robotics industry. It follows the industry through Japan, Europe, China, Korea and Taiwan as closely as through the United States. The series exists to help fundamental, long-term investors expand and deepen their circle of competence, one industry at a time, and your feedback on what was useful and on which industries to cover next shapes what we produce. Two podcast episodes complement the report, the first telling the industry’s story and the second digging deeper into the fundamentals from an investor’s standpoint. The companion slide deck (free to access) and the full research report (members only) follow below.
Most of the industry’s value and most of its demand sit outside the United States. The 41 listed companies at the core of the industry were worth USD 1,134bn at the close of October 16, 2026, and about two-thirds of that value is listed outside the United States. China installed 59 percent of the 603,307 industrial robots installed in 2025, by the count of the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), while Japan still makes about 38 percent of the world’s robots. Component makers and arm makers each hold about 30 percent of the value of the listed core, and surgical robots about a quarter.
The best long-term records belong to companies that keep earning from the machines already at work. Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ: ISRG), which takes about 84 percent of its revenue from instruments, service and leased systems, returned 23 percent a year from its 2000 listing. Fanuc (TSE: 6954), the largest maker of industrial arms, takes 17 percent of its sales from service and returned 5.2 percent a year in yen from January 2000. The report traces that difference through the history, the economics, the accounts and the valuation of the industry.
The companion deck. Robotics: a self-contained summary of the report.
Key findings
The report follows the industry country by country, and every figure in it is dated and sourced in the notes. These are the main findings of each part.
A robotics company earns most reliably from what follows the sale, because the arm is at most about half of what a factory pays and the spare parts, service and consumables recur for as long as the machine runs. A factory buys a robot cell, the arm with its gripper, sensors, software and setup engineering, and the IFR puts the turnover of whole robot systems at about 2.7 times the USD 19bn of robots installed in 2025. Service on the machines already in use brought Fanuc 17 percent of its sales in the year to March 2026, and in surgery the instruments used in each procedure recur the same way. The industry is five businesses (industrial robots, components, warehouse systems, surgical robots, and service and humanoid robots), and each sells a long-lived machine or its parts and earns again from the installed base. (Part I, Orientation)
A robot industry grows where its customers install robots in large numbers. Unimation sold the first Unimate to General Motors (NYSE: GM) in 1961, but by 1982 American plants had installed about 4,000 robots in twenty years while Japanese plants installed 16,000 in ten, so American makers never had the buyers to build a supply chain. Japan built a chain of arms, servo motors, controllers and reducers that made it the world’s robot maker, and the downturn of 2008 to 2010, when Fanuc’s operating profit fell 71 percent, showed that the chain is a cyclical exporter. Europe’s car plants made KUKA and ABB (SIX: ABBN) two of the world’s largest arm makers, and both were later sold: KUKA to Midea Group (SZSE: 000333; HKEX: 0300) in 2016, and ABB’s robot business to SoftBank Group (TSE: 9984) under an agreement of October 2025. (Part II, Evolution, Chapters 4 to 6)
China has become the industry’s largest buyer and is building its own robot makers, but foreign makers still hold most of its car plants. China became the largest market in 2013 and raised its robot density, the number of industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees, from 68 in 2016 to 470 in 2023, past Germany and Japan. Chinese makers supplied 57 percent of China’s installations in 2024 and 55 percent in 2025, as foreign makers grew faster in a record year for China’s car plants. In 2024 Chinese suppliers provided 90 percent of the robots installed in China’s metal and machinery plants and only 31 percent of those in its car plants. (Part II, Evolution, Chapter 7)
The case studies show that value lasts where a company earns from its installed base and disappears where it has none. Intuitive built a business paid on every procedure, and its shares rose 210 times from its listing. In 2014, after an FDA warning letter and a wave of product-liability suits, Intuitive’s revenue fell 5.9 percent and its service revenue still grew. iRobot sold the Roomba with no service business on the machines already in homes, and it ended in January 2026 owned by its contract manufacturer, with nothing for its shareholders. (Part II, Evolution, Chapter 8)
The profit in the chain goes to the parts a customer cannot easily replace. Component makers serving all of manufacturing earn the most: in the latest fiscal year Keyence (TSE: 6861) kept 51 percent of its sales as operating profit, Airtac International (TWSE: 1590) 30 percent and SMC (TSE: 6273) 23 percent. Makers tied to robot orders mostly earned less than Fanuc’s 21 percent, Harmonic Drive Systems (TSE: 6324) only 4.3 percent. Intuitive kept 29 percent of its USD 10bn of 2025 revenue because it is paid about USD 1,900 of instruments on every procedure, and about 84 percent of its revenue recurs. An arm maker is protected by the cost of switching, since a plant would have to retrain its engineers on a new controller and replace its spares and service, and that protection held in China’s car plants. (Part III, Structure & Economics, Chapters 9, 12 and 13)
The cycle is deep and shows first in the orders. Orders lead sales by one to two quarters, and Fanuc warns that long delivery times make customers order early, so orders run ahead of demand near a peak. The upturn of 2026 came from chip plants and data centers, and Yaskawa Electric (TSE: 6506) booked record orders of JPY 185bn for June to August 2026, up 38 percent. Fanuc’s company margin has run from 41 percent in the year to March 2015 to 17 percent in the year to March 2020, and Harmonic Drive’s fell from 14 percent to about zero in the year to March 2024. (Part III, Structure & Economics, Chapters 10 and 11)
Japan’s founders built the industry’s strongest operating records, and their shareholder records turned on what they did with the cash. Fanuc returned 6.5 percent a year in yen before it doubled its payout and adopted its first buyback policy on April 27, 2015, against 0.2 percent for the Japanese market, and 3.2 percent a year since against 11 percent for a TOPIX fund. It again holds JPY 993bn of cash and securities, 18 percent of its market value. At SMC, Palliser Capital asked in 2026 for JPY 600bn of buybacks over two years, and the board resolved JPY 50bn. The best Japanese records belong to companies whose revenue reaches beyond the robot: Daifuku (TSE: 6383), a maker of warehouse systems, returned 15 percent a year in yen from January 2001 and Keyence 12 percent. (Part IV, The Players, Chapter 15)
Outside Japan, most founders who invented a new kind of robot sold early, and many of the largest makers now belong to owners who need no public return from robots. Universal Robots, the Danish maker of cobots that work beside people without a safety cage, went to Teradyne (NASDAQ: TER) for USD 285m plus up to USD 65m, and Kiva to Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) for USD 775m as announced, while Intuitive’s founders kept their company. KUKA reports inside Midea with no published margin, and SoftBank agreed to pay USD 5.4bn for ABB Robotics, about 3 percent of its own market value. The report judges every sale, purchase and cash pile by the value per share it left the owners who stayed. (Part IV, The Players, Chapters 16 and 17)
The industry’s numbers mislead until they are adjusted, because its statistics cannot be added together and its accounts differ by country. Installations are counted by the IFR, robots made by China’s statistics bureau, orders by the Japan Robot Association (JARA) and each maker, and humanoids on each maker’s definition. Japanese accounts understate what the owner holds, because the cash sits in three balance-sheet lines, and counting all three takes Fanuc’s enterprise value from 35 to 29 times its average operating profit over ten years. Chinese accounts overstate what the business earns, because grants and tax relief sit inside operating profit: other income was 80 percent of the 2025 pre-tax profit of Estun Automation (SZSE: 002747). In surgery and warehouses the contract decides when revenue appears, so the installed base, the backlog and the cash are the steadier record. (Part V, Speaking the Language)
Robotics companies are valued best on average operating profit over a full cycle with their cash counted, because the trailing P/E is highest when profit is lowest. Fanuc’s P/E ran from 13 at March 2009 to 53 at March 2021, and on the cycle measure with cash counted it trades at 29 times against a median of 37 times for the featured companies. Whole robot businesses changed hands at 1.5 to 2.4 times revenue against a listed median of 5 times. Each purchase is judged by what it left each share: after Estun bought Cloos of Germany, its revenue grew 3.3 times from 2018 to 2025 while its diluted earnings per share fell from CNY 0.12 to CNY 0.05. (Part VI, Analysis & Valuation, Chapters 22 and 23)
Over the long run, growth in revenue per share and the revenue from installed machines separated the winners, and net cash did not. Growth in revenue per share produced 91 percent of Intuitive’s return from the end of 2004, while 55 percent of Fanuc’s return from March 2008 came from a higher P/E as its net margin fell. In the two full downturns of 2008 to 2010 and 2018 to 2020, the arm and reducer makers lost from 55 percent to all of their operating profit and 50 to 80 percent of their share price, while Keyence and Intuitive lost share price through lower valuations and largely kept their profits. The listed companies’ records look better than the industry’s, because most of its failures were private or were sold. (Part VI, Analysis & Valuation, Chapter 24)
AI already pays in conventional robots, while humanoids are valued far ahead of their revenue. The IFR grades machine vision as “already established and industry-grade” and general-purpose physical AI as “not yet industry-grade”, and AI pays today in vision, inspection and Amazon’s warehouse fleet routing. Private and listed humanoid makers are valued at about USD 120bn against about USD 235m of 2025 humanoid revenue, and Unitree Robotics (SSE STAR: 688836) sold 5,215 humanoids in 2025, mostly to research and education buyers. The only paid, multi-year humanoid deployment a customer has announced is that of GXO Logistics (NYSE: GXO) with Agility Robotics, of June 27, 2024. AI as a programming tool for conventional arms is already shipping and favors the makers with the most machines in use, so the report values a company with the humanoids earning nothing. (Part VII, The AI Inflection)
Robotics companies fail in a few known ways, and each warning appears first in a public document. They fail when their machines leave nothing to service afterward, when they depend on one customer or one country, or when they stretch their balance sheets at a cycle peak. The warnings sit in the order book, the receivables, the customer note and the service share. Fanuc’s robot orders ran at 0.84 and 0.74 times its robot sales in the middle quarters of 2023 while its sales still held. (Part VIII, Risks & Debates, Chapter 27)
The open debates of October 2026 will be settled by dated numbers that anyone can read. The Japanese orders of October 2026 to March 2027 will show whether the highest orders in JARA’s series, booked in April to June 2026, were a new cycle or orders placed early. The IFR’s figure for China’s domestic share in 2026, due in September 2027, will show whether China’s makers take the car plants. Intuitive’s procedure growth, guided at 13.5 to 15.5 percent for 2026, will measure its contest with the surgical systems of Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), which reached the US market in December 2025 and July 2026. (Part VIII, Risks & Debates, Chapter 28)
The appendices give the analyst the working tools: the investable universe of 86 listed and 22 unlisted companies, a checklist of 35 questions, a reading course of letters and filings with a listening course of 45 recordings of founders and chief executives, and the numbered notes that source the report. (Appendices)
How to use this primer
The report does not need to be read in order. Suggested paths:
a generalist with limited time, Parts I and VI plus the checklist in Appendix B;
a reader interested in the history, Part II;
an accountant, Part V with Chapter 22;
an analyst working on a specific company, Chapter 14, then Parts III, V, and VI in order;
a reader of the Japanese companies, Chapters 5, 8, 15 and 19;
a reader of the Chinese makers, Chapters 7, 19 and 22 with the second debate in Chapter 28;
a risk officer, Part VIII with Chapters 10 and 13;
a technologist, Part VII;
a reader who came for the owner-operators, Chapters 15 and 16, with Chapter 24 for what their records are worth against the benchmarks.
Every chapter ends with a “What to remember” box, and the boxes read in sequence summarize the report. The checklist follows the order of the analysis in Chapter 22, from the robot cell and the company’s place in the cycle to the share of revenue its installed machines pay and the proxy statement, because a robot maker’s value to its owners depends on the cycle, on what the machines already at work pay every year and on whether the cash reaches the owners.
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This content is published by MOI Global for educational purposes only. It is not investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation, and no security mentioned herein is recommended for purchase or sale. The publisher and contributors may hold positions in securities discussed. Figures are believed accurate as of the dates stated but are not warranted; readers should verify all data against primary sources before relying on it. Nothing herein constitutes legal, tax, or accounting advice.