American businesses are spending more on robots, and the companies building them are reaping the rewards. North American companies ordered 8,940 robots worth $622 million in the second quarter, up 4.3% in units and 21.3% in revenue from a year earlier, according to the Association for Advancing Automation. Order value is growing nearly five times faster than order volume, a sign that companies are not just buying more robots but paying more per robot and choosing more capable machines than they did a year ago.
Buying Is Showing Up Directly in Suppliers’ Earnings
That spending shows up clearly in the manufacturers’ own results. Teradyne makes machines that test whether a newly manufactured computer chip works, and it also owns Universal Robots, which builds the robotic arms factories buy to work alongside people. The company reported second quarter revenue of $1.33 billion, up 104% year over year, and its robotics business alone brought in $100 million for the first time as factories and electronics makers bought more of its machines. Electronics manufacturers and chipmakers overtook the auto industry as Teradyne’s largest robotics customer for the first time in the company’s history, Tech Times reported. “Our strategy to capture test and robotics opportunities from wafer to AI data center has driven another record quarter,” CEO Greg Smith said in a statement released with Teradyne’s earnings material.
ABB, which makes the electrical equipment and control systems that power factories and buildings, is seeing the same pattern at a larger scale. Customers placed $12 billion in orders in the second quarter, the most in the company’s history and up 28% from a year earlier, according to ABB’s earnings release. Orders for its electrification equipment jumped 58% as customers bought more of the power systems needed to run automated facilities, while orders tied specifically to data centers grew even faster. “Q2 reflects the strength of ABB’s performance and position at the core of electrification and automation megatrends,” CEO Morten Wierod said. Orders outside data centers also grew by double digits, meaning the buying spree was not limited to one type of customer.
The Pattern Is Reaching Smaller Suppliers, Too
That demand is also reaching further down the supply chain, into companies that make the smaller parts other machines depend on. Fuji Corporation, a Japanese company that makes machines used to assemble electronics like circuit boards, reported record quarterly orders up 96.6%, with orders for its robotic equipment specifically up 104%, as customers bought more machines to help build AI servers and semiconductor components, according to its earnings material.
The same AI-driven demand is lifting THK. The Japanese company, which makes precision mechanical parts that enables automated machinery to move with exact accuracy, reported first-half revenue up 32.4% and operating income up nearly 270% as customers bought more of its components for AI-related manufacturing, ETF Trends reported. THK’s management attributed the jump directly to that AI-related buying and raised its full-year forecast as a result.
That much buying is now drawing scrutiny in Washington. The Federal Communications Commission added foreign-made power inverters and new models of advanced robots, including humanoid and four-legged robots, to a restricted equipment list on July 28, based on a determination that they pose a national security risk, according to the FCC’s public notice. The restriction blocks new foreign-made robot models from receiving the authorization required to import, market or sell them in the U.S., while existing, already-authorized models remain unaffected. That puts new robotics purchases in the same regulatory category already applied to foreign-made drones and routers, a sign that how much American companies buy, and from whom, is now a policy question, not just a business one.
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