Industrial robots are booming outside car factories, new data shows
North American robot orders jumped 21% in value in Q2 2026, and the biggest growth came from chip makers, life sciences firms and food producers, not the car companies that once dominated the industry.
Key points
- North American companies ordered 8,940 robots valued at $622 million in Q2 2026, a 21.3% rise in order value compared with Q2 2025.
- Automotive original equipment manufacturers (the companies that assemble finished cars) cut orders 25% in the first half of 2026 versus the same period in 2025.
- Semiconductor and electronics makers increased robot orders 38% year-over-year in Q2 2026.
- Non-automotive customers accounted for 56% of all robot units ordered in Q2 2026.
- Collaborative robots, arms designed to work safely alongside people, made up 15.4% of all units ordered in the first half of 2026.
Robotics spending in North America is growing, and the buyers are changing fast. The Association for Advancing Automation, known as A3, released its second-quarter 2026 figures this week: 8,940 robots ordered, worth $622 million, up 21.3% in value from the same quarter last year.
The more telling story sits inside those numbers.
Who is actually buying robots right now?
For decades, car manufacturers drove robot demand. That's shifting. Automotive OEMs, the companies that build finished vehicles, ordered 25% fewer robots in the first half of 2026 than in the first half of 2025.
Everything else picked up the slack. Chip and electronics makers grew orders 35% in units over the same stretch. Life sciences and pharmaceutical companies grew 32%. Food and consumer goods producers grew 17%.
As The Robot Report noted in its coverage of the A3 data, non-automotive customers now account for more than half of all units ordered in a single quarter.
| Sector | H1 2026 unit growth vs H1 2025 |
|---|---|
| Semiconductors, electronics, photonics | +35% |
| Life sciences and pharma | +32% |
| Automotive components | +24% |
| Food and consumer goods | +17% |
| Plastics and rubber | +6% |
| Metals and metalworking | +3% |
Note the gap between automotive OEMs (down 25%) and automotive component suppliers (up 24%). Parts makers are automating hard even while the assemblers pause. Our 10 August story on Tate Inc.'s shift to robotic welding showed what that kind of commitment can look like at factory level.
What are collaborative robots, and why do they matter?
Collaborative robots, commonly called cobots, are arm-style machines built to slow or stop when a person gets too close. They're lighter and cheaper than traditional industrial robots, which are caged off from workers.
In the first half of 2026, companies ordered 2,774 cobots worth $114 million. Healthcare facilities used cobots for 43.7% of their robot orders during that period. Electronics firms used them for 36.5%. Both are sectors where workers and machines share tight spaces, and limits on speed and force are non-negotiable.
What does this mean for workers and businesses?
Manufacturing output was 1.1% above its year-earlier level in June 2026, according to Federal Reserve data. The purchasing managers' index, a monthly survey tracking whether factory activity is expanding or contracting, stayed in expansion territory for a sixth straight month in June.
"The breadth of growth outside automotive OEM is an important trend we'll continue to watch," Alex Shikany, executive vice president at A3, told The Robot Report.
The automotive pause is real, but it isn't the whole story: the diversity of buying sectors in this report is something A3 hasn't been able to say for most of the past decade.
For workers in electronics, food production or life sciences, automation is reaching factories that have stayed mostly manual until recently. Cobots in particular are entering workplaces where full industrial robots were never practical, and that's the number worth watching in Q3.
Should you worry?
If your employer is in semiconductors or food manufacturing, expect conversations about automation investment in the next 12 months. The cobot figures suggest entry-level automation is genuinely on the table for mid-sized businesses, not just large plants.
