By Amir Orusov
May 5 (Reuters) – Schaeffler expects its humanoid robotics business to build an order book in the hundreds of millions of euros by 2030, the chief executive of the German machine and car parts maker said on Tuesday.
CEO Klaus Rosenfeld, talking to Reuters after the company’s first-quarter results, did not give a more specific estimate for the potential order book.
“We have been investing significantly in the humanoid robotics area and at the moment we are collaborating with around 45 humanoid robotics players globally,” Rosenfeld said.
Those collaborations involve exchanging prototypes, discussing potential order intake and, where applicable, jointly developing manufacturing concepts, he added.
Schaeffler currently has five customer contracts in the segment. While Rosenfeld declined to name customers, he said the largest ones were with leading players in China and the United States.
In recent months, the company has also secured its first meaningful contracts for actuators and other components, including strain wave gears, used in the robotics industry.
The 2030 target assumes that projected demand for humanoid robots from 2026 to 2030 materializes, including global production of at least 1 million units by the end of the decade, Rosenfeld said.
Schaeffler estimates that around 50% of humanoid robots’ materials bill represents an addressable market for the company. It aims to capture roughly 10% of that opportunity by 2030.
The company’s share performance has been supported by its growing humanoid robotics business, helping shield the stock from volatility in the automotive sector, even though the segment accounted for less than 1% of group sales in 2025.
Apart from Schaeffler’s robotics exposure, the shares have performed “extremely well” thanks to the company’s relatively good positioning in the electric mobility shift and increased investments in Europe’s defence industry, Rico Luman, senior economist at ING Research, told Reuters.
“The European automotive market is still not great in terms of volume, at some 85% of pre-pandemic levels, but Schaeffler seems well underway to diversify,” Luman said.
(Reporting by Amir Orusov in Gdansk; additional reporting by Emanuele Berro; editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)
