Among tech companies, robotics companies are particularly vulnerable to tariff hikes, given that many robot parts come from China. The import taxes mean higher costs that robotics firms will have to either absorb or pass on to customers—a setback to their business either way.
But a number of startups that employ overseas workers to control robots in U.S. facilities are hopeful the changes could actually boost demand from U.S. manufacturers. That’s because these remote-controlled robots could still cost less than hiring U.S. factory workers.
Reflex Robotics, for example, employs workers in the U.S., Latin America and South America, who can take over control of the three-year-old company’s wheeled humanoids, said chief revenue officer David Schwebel. The New York-based firm’s human-operated robots are already moving packages for logistics giant GXO.
Even if costs go up for some imported robot parts, companies like Reflex could still be able to profitably price their robots below the wages for humans performing the same jobs. Eventually, these robotics companies plan to use the data they collected from human operators to train their robots to work autonomously, which could bring costs down further.
Ultra and Deft Robotics are pursuing a similar strategy. Ultra’s legless robots package e-commerce orders for multiple paying customers at logistics firms, said co-founder and CEO Jon Miller Schwartz. The one-year-old company hires workers outside the U.S. who wear VR headsets and motion-capture gloves to direct the robots.
That approach “has basically allowed us to deploy these robots rapidly in a way that actually adds value for our customers,” said Schwartz. Ultra went through Y Combinator last summer and raised $4.5 million in a seed funding round led by NextView Ventures in September, he said.
Deft plans to hire workers in Mexico who can operate its robots to place items like t-shirts and cosmetics in boxes at e-commerce facilities, said co-founder and CEO Shane Lee. The one-year-old company raised $100,000 from Founders, Inc., an accelerator, and is now talking to venture capitalists to raise a further $1.5 million, Lee said.
If the tariffs squeeze the profit margins for Deft’s customers, the San Francisco-based company can pitch, “let us help you adopt my solution and then we’ll help you bring your margins back up,” said Lee, who pointed out that warehouses already face labor shortages. “Especially Gen Z and onwards” are not interested in those jobs, he said.
These robotics makers could offer manufacturers negotiating tariff hikes the best of both worlds: continued access to overseas workers while producing the goods on U.S. soil. But this solution will surely disappoint Americans hoping trade levies will bring home factory jobs.
The contrast with these firms is a startup like Chef Robotics. The six-year-old company has robots assembling food packages for seven companies in the U.S. and Canada, including at an Amy’s Kitchen facility in California, where the robots scoop rice into plastic trays for frozen food packages.
A couple of months ago, Chef ordered from China two shipping containers full of the metal frames it uses for mounting robotic parts, as well as extra Lenovo chips and cameras used in the robots, said founder and CEO Rajat Bhageria. The frames should last the company for multiple months, he said, “but in hindsight we should have done a lot more.”
Before the tariffs set in, each of those frames cost $1,400, including shipping costs. With the tariffs, the prices could more than double. But that would still be cheaper than ordering frames from the U.S., Bhageria estimates. Its previous San Francisco-area supplier charged $18,000 and a Midwest supplier in 2023 quoted $13,000 for each frame. Chef is now considering ordering parts from machine shops in Taiwan instead.