Business of Automation

Association for Advancing Automation
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The Business of Automation is a weekly video podcast exploring the money, markets, policies, and business decisions shaping industrial automation.Hosted by Aaron Prather, Director of Market Intelligence at A3, the show goes beyond the headlines to examine what developments in robotics, artificial intelligence, manufacturing, supply chains, investment, and government policy mean for companies across the automation industry.From humanoid robotics and emerging technologies to market growth, trade policy, and automation ROI, each episode delivers informed analysis for automation leaders, manufacturers, investors, integrators, and anyone building the future of industry. 

Episodes

  1. 5d ago ·  Video

    The Q2 Numbers Are In: Robot Orders Rise as Demand Moves Beyond Automotive

    North American companies ordered 8,940 robots worth $622 million in the second quarter of 2026. Unit orders increased 4.3% from a year earlier, while order value climbed 21.3%. Those are strong headline numbers, but the bigger story is what changed underneath them. In this episode, Aaron Prather, Director of Market Intelligence at A3, joins Principal Analyst Alex Coleman to explain why non-automotive customers accounted for 56% of Q2 robot units and how semiconductors, life sciences, food and consumer goods, metals and automotive components are offsetting continued weakness among automotive OEMs. They also examine whether the gap between unit growth and order value reflects pricing pressure, demand for larger systems or buyers adding more vision and advanced functionality. The conversation explores why automotive OEMs remain under pressure as EV investment slows and trade uncertainty complicates capital planning, why automotive components have held up better and what consumers keeping vehicles longer could mean for parts demand. Aaron and Alex also unpack the sharp swings in collaborative robot orders, with cobots falling to 12.7% of Q2 units, and ask whether the category itself is getting harder to define as capabilities overlap. Finally, they look ahead to Q3 and Q4 and the sectors most likely to shape the rest of 2026, including logistics, material handling, life sciences and semiconductors. Read the Q2 2026 robot order report: https://www.automate.org/market-intelligence/insights/robot-orders-increase-in-q2-as-automation-demand-broadens-across-industries Explore A3 Market Intelligence: https://www.automate.org/market-intelligence Learn more about MI+: https://www.automate.org/market-intelligence/mi-plus Explore The Business of Automation: https://www.automate.org/business-of-automation Subscribe to The Business of Automation newsletter: https://substack.com/@thebusinessofautomation

    The Q2 Numbers Are In: Robot Orders Rise as Demand Moves Beyond Automotive

  2. Sep 4 ·  Video

    Teradyne vs. JAKA, NSF’s $30M Robot Center and Carbon’s 150M Plants

    Three robotics stories reveal where the industry’s next competitive battles are moving: patents, people and data. Teradyne Robotics filed a patent infringement case against JAKA at Europe’s Unified Patent Court. The National Science Foundation committed $30 million over five years to a center studying how people and robots adapt to one another. Carbon Robotics says its Large Plant Model was trained on roughly 150 million labeled plants. In Episode 2 of The Business of Automation, Aaron Prather, Director of Market Intelligence at A3, connects these announcements to a larger shift. More of robotics’ value and risk now sit outside the machine itself. Teradyne alleges that multiple JAKA collaborative robot models infringe patents covering hardware and software associated with Universal Robots. Those allegations have not been proven in court. The larger business story is where the case was filed. Historically, enforcing patent rights across Europe could require separate proceedings in multiple countries. A ruling from the Unified Patent Court could potentially affect JAKA products across 17 of its 18 current member states. For robotics manufacturers, integrators and buyers, intellectual property exposure is becoming an increasingly important part of evaluating an automation purchase. The second story focuses on the Center for Human and Robot Co-Adaptation, led by the University of Texas at Austin. The center brings together researchers from six universities and industry partners including Amazon, Apptronik, Diligent Robotics, Google DeepMind, Hello Robot, MassRobotics, NVIDIA and Robust AI. The research is not only about making robots more capable. It is about understanding how people and robots learn from one another and adjust their behavior over time in homes, hospitals, workplaces and public spaces. A robot can perform every task correctly and still fail if the people around it do not trust or accept it. Aaron explains why training, workforce design and clear team leadership should be part of an automation strategy from the beginning. Carbon Robotics provides the clearest example of value moving away from the robot itself. Its LaserWeeder uses computer vision and lasers to identify and eliminate weeds, but its deeper competitive advantage may be the data behind the machine. Carbon says its Large Plant Model was trained using roughly 150 million labeled plants collected across more than 100 crops in 15 countries. That scale allows growers to adapt the system to field conditions using only a few images instead of waiting for an entirely new crop-specific model. The relationship also introduces another business question. iMerit helped provide the annotation infrastructure supporting Carbon’s data flywheel, and iMerit has now been acquired by EXL. When an outside vendor becomes critical to a robot’s performance, a change in ownership can become part of the customer’s risk. Together, these stories raise three questions every automation buyer should ask: What is the intellectual property risk? How will people respond to the system? Who owns the data the machine generates? Read the deeper analysis, with every source linked and every number cited: https://thebusinessofautomation.substack.com This episode is presented by the A3 International Robot Safety Conference, November 3-5, 2026, at Huntington Place in Detroit. Learn more and register: https://www.automate.org/events/international-robot-safety-conference/register Follow Aaron Prather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amprather Explore A3: https://www.automate.org

    Teradyne vs. JAKA, NSF’s $30M Robot Center and Carbon’s 150M Plants

  3. Aug 28 ·  Video

    This is The Business of Automation

    The Business of Automation is a weekly video podcast exploring the money, markets, policies, and business decisions shaping industrial automation. Hosted by Aaron Prather, Director of Market Intelligence at A3, the show goes beyond the headlines to examine what developments in robotics, artificial intelligence, manufacturing, supply chains, investment, and government policy mean for companies across the automation industry. From humanoid robotics and emerging technologies to market growth, trade policy, and automation ROI, each episode delivers informed analysis for automation leaders, manufacturers, investors, integrators, and anyone building the future of industry.

  4. Aug 28 ·  Video

    Serve’s Forecast Cut, FORT’s SPAC and SoftBank’s $200M Gravis Bet

    Three robotics stories reveal the same business risk: dependency. Serve Robotics grew revenue 404% year over year and still cut its 2026 forecast by more than 60%. FORT Robotics is pursuing a public listing at a $556.6 million enterprise value. SoftBank invested $200 million in Gravis Robotics, a Swiss startup bringing autonomous capabilities to heavy equipment that companies already own. In the first episode of The Business of Automation, Aaron Prather, Director of Market Intelligence at A3, examines what these stories reveal about platform dependency, vendor lock-in, safety infrastructure, retrofit autonomy and the growing concentration of robotics capital. Serve shows what can happen when expected growth relies heavily on another platform’s customers and delivery volume. After lower-than-expected activity through Uber Eats, the company reduced its annual guidance and accelerated its expansion across Grubhub, DoorDash, advertising, software and healthcare robotics. The lesson is not that partnerships are inherently bad. It is that part of your business plan belongs to someone else when your forecast depends on that company’s customers, interface or demand. FORT represents a different strategy. Its safety hardware and software are designed to work across machines, manufacturers and applications. Aaron examines FORT’s effort to become shared safety infrastructure for physical AI, along with the valuation, shareholder-redemption risk and cash questions surrounding its proposed SPAC merger. Gravis is addressing equipment lock-in from another direction. Its retrofit technology can add autonomy across multiple heavy-equipment brands without forcing companies to replace an entire fleet. That model could have implications for construction, mining, agriculture, ports and other industries where replacing existing equipment is economically unrealistic. SoftBank’s investment also adds to its expanding robotics portfolio, creating a tension between increasingly vendor-agnostic technology and increasingly concentrated capital. Together, these stories raise a question every automation buyer should ask: Who controls the relationship your operation depends on? Read the deeper analysis, with every source linked and every number cited: https://thebusinessofautomation.substack.com This episode is presented by the A3 International Robot Safety Conference, November 3-5, 2026, at Huntington Place in Detroit. Learn more and register: https://www.automate.org/events/international-robot-safety-conference/register Follow Aaron Prather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amprather Explore A3: https://www.automate.org

    Serve’s Forecast Cut, FORT’s SPAC and SoftBank’s $200M Gravis Bet

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About

The Business of Automation is a weekly video podcast exploring the money, markets, policies, and business decisions shaping industrial automation.Hosted by Aaron Prather, Director of Market Intelligence at A3, the show goes beyond the headlines to examine what developments in robotics, artificial intelligence, manufacturing, supply chains, investment, and government policy mean for companies across the automation industry.From humanoid robotics and emerging technologies to market growth, trade policy, and automation ROI, each episode delivers informed analysis for automation leaders, manufacturers, investors, integrators, and anyone building the future of industry. 

Information

  • Creator
    Association for Advancing Automation
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    4
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Business of Automation
  • Show Website
    Business of Automation