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3 hours ago
AnalysisJP

Who supplies humanoid robot joints? Japan's Harmonic Drive and Nabtesco, China's Leaderdrive and Germany's Schaeffler lead, while Tesla and Figure build their own

The joints of today's humanoid robots come from a short list of gear and actuator makers: Harmonic Drive Systems and Nabtesco in Japan, Leaderdrive, Tuopu and Sanhua in China, and Schaeffler in Germany, while Tesla, Figure and Unitree design key parts themselves. Filings show orders reaching the Japanese incumbents first, yet Tesla's stated Fremont capacity alone implies 25 million to 30 million joint actuators a year, about 22 times the 1.15 million precision reducers Nabtesco can make annually.

15 sourcesHarmonic Drive SystemsNabtescoLeaderdriveHarmonic / Strain-Wave GearsElectric Actuators
yesterday
PartnershipJP

Hitachi and FANUC pair edge AI chips with industrial robots, aiming for a global physical AI rollout from fiscal 2027

Hitachi and FANUC signed a strategic partnership on Sept. 30 to commercialize physical AI jointly, combining Hitachi's HMAX Industry software and in-house edge AI semiconductor with FANUC robots. Trials start in Hitachi's Ibaraki-area plants as “Customer Zero,” with global sales planned from fiscal 2027. No financial terms were disclosed.

4 sourcesFANUCHitachiYaskawa ElectricEdge AI ComputeDepth Vision
2 days ago
FundingJP

Tokyo's Qibitech raises about ¥600 million in Series B to sell one control layer for robots from any maker

Qibitech, the Tokyo developer of HATS vendor-agnostic robot control software, said on 30 September 2026 it raised about ¥600 million in a Series B through a third-party share allotment to funds managed by JIC Venture Growth Investments and Sumitomo Corporation Venture Partners. The money goes to HATS development, sales and hiring.

2 sourcesQibitechInboltDestro AIFleet Orchestration Software
20 days ago
ProductJP

FANUC to ship AI Welding Agent that reads drawings and writes robot weld programs, built on Google's Gemini Enterprise

FANUC said on Sept. 11 it will begin shipping an AI Welding Agent at the end of December 2026. The system photographs a part drawing with the CRX tablet teach pendant and generates welding conditions and robot motion without manual teaching, using Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise. Price was not disclosed.

9 sourcesFANUCGoogleRobot Foundation Models
Jul 16, 2026
PartnershipJP

Fujitsu enlists FANUC, Yaskawa and Kawasaki to build a sovereign physical AI platform on NVIDIA technology

Fujitsu said on July 16 it had begun exploring physical AI businesses with three of Japan's largest robot makers, FANUC, Yaskawa Electric and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, using NVIDIA Cosmos, Omniverse, Isaac and the Newton physics engine. Fujitsu will build a common software platform and hardware interfaces, with manufacturing, retail and logistics, and healthcare as first targets. No timeline or financial terms were given.

4 sourcesFujitsuFANUCYaskawa ElectricWorld ModelsSim-to-Real Transfer
Jul 15, 2026
PartnershipJP

Yaskawa puts Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 inside MOTOMAN NEXT to build an agentic industrial robot

Yaskawa Electric said on July 15 it had developed an agentic robot system with Google DeepMind that uses Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 as the decision layer for its MOTOMAN NEXT robot. The system plans and executes tasks from high-level instructions without detailed teaching and recovers from errors on its own. Applications and delivery timing will be announced later.

1 sourceYaskawa ElectricGoogleFANUCRobot Foundation ModelsVLA
May 22, 2026
BusinessJP

Yaskawa targets record ¥100 billion operating profit by 2029, betting on physical AI and humanoid actuators after missing its last plan

Yaskawa Electric unveiled a 2035 vision and a four-year plan, Dash 35, on May 22 that aims to more than double operating profit from ¥47.3 billion to ¥100 billion by fiscal 2029 on revenue of ¥650 billion. The plan makes physical AI one of five pillars, with the MOTOMAN NEXT autonomous robot and new actuators for humanoid robots, backed by ¥250 billion of investment. It follows a year in which net profit fell 38.2% and the previous plan's targets were missed.

2 sourcesYaskawa ElectricFANUCKawasaki Heavy IndustriesElectric Actuators
May 22, 2026
PartnershipJP

Kawasaki opens a physical AI centre in San Jose with NVIDIA, Microsoft, Analog Devices and Fujitsu, starting with hospital robots

Kawasaki Heavy Industries opened the Kawasaki Physical AI Center San Jose on May 21 to develop AI-driven robot systems with NVIDIA, Analog Devices, Microsoft and Fujitsu, with healthcare and elderly care as the first focus. President Yasuhiko Hashimoto said the goal is a hospital one-stop solution covering patients from arrival to post-operative care. The move comes as Kawasaki plans to lift robot sales 24% this year, led by car body and semiconductor equipment lines.

3 sourcesKawasaki Heavy IndustriesNVIDIAFujitsuRobot Foundation ModelsEdge AI Compute
May 15, 2026
PartnershipJP

FANUC opens its robots to Google's Intrinsic and Gemini and deepens NVIDIA ties in a two-day physical AI push

FANUC said on May 13 that all of its robots will be fully supported on Intrinsic's enterprise software platform and that it has joined Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics trusted tester programme, after shipping more than 1,000 robots for physical AI uses since December. Two days later it expanded its NVIDIA work, linking ROBOGUIDE with Isaac Sim, training a dual-arm robot with Isaac GR00T N and moving a collision-avoidance system to Jetson Thor.

2 sourcesFANUCGoogleGoogle DeepMindVLARobot Foundation Models
Apr 24, 2026
BusinessJP

FANUC posts record ¥857.8 billion sales as robot revenue rises 15% and China orders jump 55% in the final quarter

FANUC said on April 24 that sales for the year to March 2026 rose 7.6% to a record ¥857.8 billion and operating profit rose 15.7% to ¥183.8 billion, with robots now 44.1% of revenue. Fourth-quarter orders climbed 19.2% to ¥252.0 billion, led by a 55.2% jump in China, and the company guided for another record year while authorising a buyback of up to ¥50 billion.

5 sourcesFANUCYaskawa ElectricKawasaki Heavy IndustriesFleet Orchestration SoftwareEdge AI Compute
Apr 23, 2026
ResearchJP

Sony AI's Ace becomes the first robot to beat elite table tennis players under official rules, Nature paper shows

Sony AI's autonomous table tennis system Ace won three of five matches against elite players and lost both matches against two Japanese T.League professionals in April 2025 trials, according to a paper published in Nature on April 22, 2026. The robot combines event-based vision sensors from Sony Semiconductor Solutions, an eight-axis arm and reinforcement learning policies trained in simulation, and reaches a perception latency of 10.2 milliseconds.

2 sourcesSonyFANUCYaskawa ElectricRLSim-to-Real Transfer
Mar 26, 2026
PolicyJP

Japan approves AI robotics strategy targeting a 30% global share and 20 trillion yen market by 2040

Japan's inter-ministerial AI robotics council on March 26, 2026 endorsed a national strategy that aims to win more than 30% of a multi-purpose robot market the government expects to reach about 60 trillion yen by 2040. The plan promises an open-source domestic robot foundation model by around June 2027, names 16 deployment fields and defers concrete sector targets to a roadmap revision due in May.

7 sourcesFujitsuFANUCYaskawa ElectricRobot Foundation ModelsHarmonic / Strain-Wave Gears
Mar 11, 2026
M&AJP

EU clears SoftBank's $5.4 billion ABB Robotics deal, a price of 17 times EBITDA to give its robot AI a body

The European Commission cleared SoftBank Group's purchase of ABB's robotics division, valued at USD 5.375 billion, under its simplified procedure on 11 March 2026. The price equals 17.2 times the division's 2024 EBITDA, while the floor valuation of Skild AI, whose round SoftBank led in January, is 2.6 times as high. Approvals in China and the United States remain, and both companies expect closing in mid-to-late 2026.

4 sourcesSoftBank GroupABBSkild AIRobot Foundation Models
Jan 26, 2026
BusinessJP

FANUC robot orders rise 21% as China and Europe pick up, and its CRX cobot draws more than 1,000 physical AI orders after iREX

FANUC said robot division orders rose 20.9% to ¥98.8 billion in the October to December quarter, while robot sales grew 21.9% to ¥96.6 billion. The Japanese robot and CNC maker raised its full-year sales forecast to ¥840.7 billion but trimmed its operating profit outlook by ¥3.0 billion, and said it had taken orders for more than 1,000 CRX collaborative robots linked to physical AI since the iREX show in December.

5 sourcesFANUCYaskawa ElectricTeradyneROS 2