America Wants to Make Its Own Humanoid Robots. That Won’t Be Easy.
His new company, Robo Inc., is the latest venture for a serial entrepreneur who has spent the previous decade chasing the next big thing, from drone photography and Bitcoin mining to importing protective gear during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Key takeaways
- The most recent developments in humanoid robotics show rapid expansion into both commercial and regulatory arenas.
- At the Humanoids Summit 2026, Honda unveiled its new “Avatar” robot—a tele‑operated humanoid with a dexterous multi‑fingered hand that is positioned as a physical extension for humans in hazardous or remote tasks, reviving the legacy of its ASIMO platform.
- In parallel, Mitsubishi Motors announced a partnership with the University of Tokyo startup Highlanders to mass‑produce up to 1,000 “HL Human” humanoid units per month at its Kyoto engine plant, targeting manufacturing, logistics and disaster‑response work.
- Tau Robotics has begun a pilot in San Francisco that lets residents hire its $50,000 humanoid cleaners for $30 an hour, though the service is still supervised by remote operators.
- Industry analysts are projecting explosive growth: Goldman Sachs expects global shipments to reach 76,000 units in 2027 and 502,000 by 2032, while Barclays predicts the market could swell from its current $2‑3 billion valuation to $200 billion by 2035.
His new company, Robo Inc., is the latest venture for a serial entrepreneur who has spent the previous decade chasing the next big thing, from drone photography and Bitcoin mining to importing protective gear during the Covid-19 pandemic. Building robots, however, means taking on an industry China has designated a strategic priority. That is a challenge of a different magnitude.
Mr. Haggerty plans to procure components from all over the world and make some in-house. But even as he sets out to establish a robotics beachhead in the United States, he has confronted a stark realization. China has near-total dominance of the supply chain. So building a robot entirely free of Chinese parts was not practical.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Since 2022, Mr. Haggerty had been the main North American distributor for Unitree Robotics, China’s leading humanoid robot manufacturer. That role has given him a close-up view of an industry Chinese companies command, producing robots more cheaply and at a scale that American manufacturers have yet to approach.
“In China, these things are just walking around the streets,” he said. “They have so much more experience than we do.”
But in a warehouse in a leafy industrial park on suburban Long Island, Mr. Haggerty, 30, is trying to pull off a seemingly quixotic task — to produce humanlike robots in the United States.
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China already manufactures humanoid robots by the thousands. A new generation of U.S. start-ups is betting that there is still time to compete.
Meaghan Tobin Amir Hamja
By Meaghan Tobin
Visuals by Amir Hamja
Meaghan Tobin is the Asia technology correspondent. She reported from Plainview on Long Island.
Teddy Haggerty knew exactly what he was up against when he decided to build humanoid robots in the United States.
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