Millions of robots will need hundreds of millions of motors, gears, sensors and actuators. Somewhere in that supply chain, something is going to break.
This tracks with what we've seen for years in industrial robotics: Nabtesco and Harmonic Drive have been the real bottleneck suppliers for six-axis arms long before anyone called it Physical AI, and lead times on precision reducers were already stretching past 20 weeks during the last automation boom. The actuation point is the right one to watch, since most industrial robot OEMs still single-source their harmonic gearing, which is a fragile position if humanoid demand starts competing for the same production lines. Would be curious how much of that Japanese and German capacity is already locked into industrial robotics versus free to absorb humanoid volume.
This tracks with what we've seen for years in industrial robotics: Nabtesco and Harmonic Drive have been the real bottleneck suppliers for six-axis arms long before anyone called it Physical AI, and lead times on precision reducers were already stretching past 20 weeks during the last automation boom. The actuation point is the right one to watch, since most industrial robot OEMs still single-source their harmonic gearing, which is a fragile position if humanoid demand starts competing for the same production lines. Would be curious how much of that Japanese and German capacity is already locked into industrial robotics versus free to absorb humanoid volume.