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The last few years have seen an explosion in the robotics industry. In the first half of 2026, at least 621 robotics companies (not including Waymo) received funding — some $31.8 billion in total.1 With all that froth, it can be hard to know which companies to pay attention to.
Below you’ll find my list of 19 companies that I expect to have a big impact on the robotics industry over the next few years. This list is the fruit of months of research — including interviews with the CEOs of several companies.
To keep things manageable, I’ll focus on companies that either directly make robots or make generalist AI models to control robots. I won’t include companies that only collect data, make components, or build infrastructure for robotics.
The current wave of robotics is very new — over half of the companies on my list were founded in the past four years — so it’s unclear which of these companies (if any) will come out on top. Regardless, the next few years are going to be very interesting for the industry.