Humanoid's HMND 01 robot working for Bosch.

Humanoid

At 1X, maker of the NEO humanoid robot, vertical integration is religion: motors, batteries, copper coils, even the tendons in robot limbs. The UK’s Humanoid, however, is taking exactly the opposite strategy: German industrial giant Schaeffler is going to supply components for Humanoid’s robots, and Bosch is going to build them.

Humanoid, the UK-based robotics company founded by Artem Sokolov in 2024, announced today that Bosch will manufacture its HMND 01 robots for the European market. The manufacturing deal follows a successful March 2026 proof-of-concept at a Bosch logistics facility, where Humanoid’s robots autonomously moved boxes across five different sizes, weights and footprints from conveyors to trolleys. The two companies are also exploring integration of Bosch actuators, drives, and sensors into future HMND versions.

Add this to what Humanoid announced just six days ago — Schaeffler’s components as a key part of the HMND humanoid robot, a plan to deploy more than 1,000 robots at Schaeffler facilities, and scaling component purchases to support delivery of upwards of 100,000 robots by 2031 — and the picture clarifies. Humanoid is taking a different path than 1X and other humanoid robotics manufacturers, like Figure, that are maximizing vertical integration.

First, it’s Euro-centric, with European component providers and manufacturers. It’s worth noting that Humanoid has also announced deployments and projects with Siemens and SAP.

Second, it’s distributed, with Humanoid looking to be responsible for research, design, integration and all the heavy lifting it requires to ship a working, capable humanoid robot, but partnering with major industrial giants to quickly scale manufacturing … and perhaps support and servicing as well.

Third, it’s circular, with Humanoid forming deep bi-directional partnerships where allies commit to not only being part of the supply chain for its humanoid robots but also committing to being a major customer — and, importantly — proof point for the capabilities and successes of the robots. This is analogous to the Nvidia method of at both investing in and generating significant sales demand from key partners.

Fourth, it ought to be capital efficient, since Humanoid doesn’t have to build robot construction factories (Bosch has plenty of factory space) and doesn’t have to invent everything itself. Schaeffler has high-quality actuators that form the muscles of a robot, and Bosch could end up supplying other components as well. This is particularly important if you’re a UK company that has raised under $100 million and are competing with players like Figure that has raised around $2 billion and Apptronik that has raised almost $1 billion.

There are risks associated with this strategy, of course: when you don’t own the stack, you don’t (fully) own the roadmap. And while you might be a key partner for your partnerships, they might just have other priorities as well.

That said: doing everything in-house is obviously a risk as well. Companies that decide to go this route control their own timetables, roadmaps and priorities to an extent, but also have to answer some questions: are we actually good at making everything we need? Can we make all the bits without losing focus?

Getting help, assuming that help is indeed helpful, should shorten the path to delivering high-quality humanoids at a reasonable price, and that’s what Humanoid founder and CEO Artem Sokolov highlighted:

“For Humanoid, this agreement is a critical step in our roadmap, bridging the gap between POC validation and large-scale deployment,” he said in a statement. “Our goal has always been to shorten the path between innovation and real-world integration, and this agreement reflects that approach. Together with Bosch, as a strong strategic manufacturing partner, we are committed to bringing humanoid robots into industrial settings, scaling their deployment, and accelerating adoption across logistics, manufacturing, and beyond.”

As far as Bosch and Schaeffler are concerned, they gain key access to a potentially very lucrative future market: humanoid robots and the labor that they represent. And they do so at minimal risk, acquiring a customer without having to outlay R&D capital to design the robot hardware and software themselves.

It would not be shocking if there are parts of the agreements, not publicly mentioned, that involve investment and ownership possibilities for Bosch and/or Schaeffler.

For now, no word on that specifically.

And for now, this is about positioning Bosch and Schaeffler for success in the humanoid robotics space.

“This partnership is built on the shared belief in the great potential of robotics in industry,” said Bosch’s head of IP Peter Svejkovsky.

“Bosch’s goal is to advance the scaling of humanoid robotics and to further develop this field of the future. With our global production infrastructure and deep industrialization expertise we are the perfect partner to take the step from prototype to volume manufacturing.”

If Humanoid’s bet pays off and its path works, perhaps the company won’t have built the biggest humanoid robotics company in Europe as much as it will have assembled it.

Oddly enough, that feels appropriate.