Robot Industry Growth & Trends in 2026
Factory installs are at record highs, service robots are booming, and one line in the data stands out for anyone in the rental business: Robots-as-a-Service grew 42% in a single year. Here is what the 2026 numbers say — and what they mean if you rent or buy.
Robotics spent 2025 breaking records, and the data released since confirms the momentum carried into 2026. The most authoritative read comes from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), whose World Robotics 2025 report is the industry’s benchmark. Read alongside forecasts from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, it paints a clear picture — and points to why the rental side of the market is one of the fastest-moving parts of it.
Factories: a fourth straight record
On the industrial side, the IFR reported 542,000 new industrial robots installed worldwide in 2024, keeping annual installations above half a million for the fourth year running. The global operational stock — robots actually working in factories — reached about 4.66 million units, up 9% year on year. China alone installed roughly 295,000 and now runs an operational fleet north of 2 million, the largest of any country. The headline the IFR drew is simple: factory robot deployments have doubled over the past decade.
Service robots: the faster-growing half
For most of our readers, the more relevant numbers are in service robotics — the machines that work in hotels, restaurants, warehouses and public spaces. The IFR counted nearly 200,000 professional service robots sold in 2024, up 9%. Within that, transport and logistics robots led with about 102,900 units (+14%), professional cleaning robots grew 34% to more than 25,000, and medical robots surged 91% to around 16,700. Hospitality robots dipped about 11% to some 42,000 — a reminder the sector is maturing unevenly rather than rising in a straight line.
The single most important line for the rental market: the IFR noted that Robots-as-a-Service — renting robots rather than buying them outright — grew 42% in the transport and logistics category in 2024. That is the model this platform is built around, and it is growing faster than sales.
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Explore rentalsThe long-range forecasts
The banks are betting the curve keeps climbing. Goldman Sachs projects the humanoid-robot market alone could reach $38 billion by 2035 — a more than sixfold increase on its earlier estimate — with robot shipments it now pegs at roughly 1.4 million units over that span. Morgan Stanley is bolder still, estimating a humanoid market worth some $5 trillion by 2050 and about 13 million units in service by 2035, mostly in factories and warehouses. Both revised upward chiefly because AI progressed faster than expected — the same software leap behind 2026’s new service-robot technologies and humanoid launches.
Why it matters if you rent or buy
Growth this broad has practical consequences for a buyer. More units in the field means more competition and better pricing, and a deeper bench of suppliers to compare in the directory. The 42% jump in Robots-as-a-Service tells you the smart money increasingly favours access over ownership — you get current hardware, maintenance and support without the capital hit or the depreciation. And the surge in categories like cleaning and logistics means the robot you need for a specific job is far more likely to exist, and to be rentable, than it was even a year ago.
The counsel that falls out of the data is the one we keep returning to: unless a robot is core to your operation every single day, rent before you buy. It is the fastest-growing part of the market for a reason. Our cost guide shows what that looks like in day rates, and the robot types hub is the quickest way to find the right category.
Ride the growth — rent a robot
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Sources
- International Federation of Robotics (IFR) — World Robotics 2025, Industrial Robots (542,000 installs, 4.66M operational stock, China figures).
- International Federation of Robotics (IFR) — World Robotics 2025, Service Robots (professional sales, category growth, 42% Robots-as-a-Service growth).
- Goldman Sachs Research — humanoid-robot market forecast ($38 billion by 2035; ~1.4 million units).
- Morgan Stanley Research — humanoid-robot market forecast (~$5 trillion by 2050; ~13 million units by 2035).
- Crunchbase News — record robotics venture funding in 2026.
Figures are paraphrased from the named sources above and reflect the latest available data as of publication; forecasts are estimates, not guarantees.