Among foreign component suppliers, Schaeffler has been unusually forward-leaning on robotics. Its latest quarterly results put the humanoid-robot order backlog at 350 million euros, a figure it discounts heavily, applying at least a 50 per cent haircut to customer forecasts borrowed from automotive life-cycle maths.
That 350 million covers only three OEMs. One is named: XPeng’s Iron, for which Schaeffler is the nominated component supplier with start of production planned for the fourth quarter. The other two are US firms under confidentiality. High-profile early announcements with NEURA, Hexagon and Humanoid have not yet reached the order book, and one Humanoid contract has not even met internal confirmation standards.
The company has taken more than 50 new sample orders year to date in 2026, already above full-year 2025. In 2026, three customers across three regions with seven products reach mass production, none from the announced partnerships. It is in talks with 45 OEMs, and chief executive Klaus Rosenfeld says the count will be updated every quarter.
Actuators, not whole robots
Schaeffler does not build complete robots. It builds the actuators, recombining bearings, motors, gearboxes, screws and sensors from its legacy strengths. Its modular platform spans XXS to XL: rotary actuators for shoulders, arms and knees, linear actuators with planetary roller screws for legs and torso, and hollow-cup motors with micro-screws, tendons and tactile sensors for hands and fingers.
The platform won the Hermes Award at Hannover. Its key trick is building the bearing directly into the motor rotor, cutting installation space by about 20 per cent and shaving up to 500 grams and 10 mm from a single joint. Across dozens of joints, that compounds into real weight and cooling gains. A chipless forming process takes precision parts from minutes to seconds, and 12 core processes with more than 90 methods let it scale by adding equipment and shifts.
Factories as test beds
Schaeffler sells actuators to robot firms and buys their machines for its own plants. It invested 10 million US dollars in Agility Robotics, with three Digit units already moving material in its US factory. It plans 1,000 to 2,000 wheeled robots from Humanoid by 2032, at least 1,000 AEON units from Hexagon over seven years and thousands from NEURA by 2035. Its own shop floors become multi-year proving grounds, feeding next-generation actuator design. It builds digital twins with Nvidia in Omniverse and runs predictive maintenance with VinDynamics.
In China it works with Leju, ROX and Qianxun without binding to one OEM, and opened an embodied-AI robot venture in Taicang in February 2026. Peers are moving too: Bosch supplies NEURA from Berlin, Continental’s Aumovio contract-manufactures for Mentee Robotics, ZF adapts drive-by-wire experience and Valeo ports automotive perception to robots.
A hedge against a soft car market
Schaeffler’s edge is twofold: a modular actuator platform and robots flooding its own factories as a data source. The weakness is real too, as China’s local joint, screw and gear chain iterates fast and localisation must keep pace. The 350 million euro backlog is a rounding error against 11.7 billion euros of first-half revenue, and Rosenfeld concedes robotics and defence add little to profit near term. But the car side is under pressure: the group cut its 2028 sales target from 27 to 29 billion euros to 24 to 26 billion on softer-than-expected EV demand, with e-drives still loss-making in the first half.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.
