INDUSTRY NEWS
Double-digit growth for US robot industry
According to preliminary results published on 18 June 2026 by the International Federation of Robotics( IFR), the number of industrial robot installations in the United States rose by 11 % year-on-year to reach 38,000 units in 2025. This significant recovery, it said, is driven by robust growth in the food industry and other non-manufacturing sectors. However, the automotive industry remains the largest adopter and reached 13,500 units, 1 % below last year’ s result.
“ The United States are back on the growth track,” said Takayuki Ito, outgoing President of the International Federation of Robotics.“ While automotive achieved its third-best result in seven years, the data highlights a growing demand for flexible automation in the food industry. Adoption in this sector surged by 30 %, now ranking alongside metal and machinery and electrical-electronics, all with approximately 3,000 installations in 2025.”
Robot density
The degree of automation in the U. S., as measured by robot density, stands at 307 industrial robots in use for every 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry. This places the U. S. in eighth position worldwide behind top automated countries such as South Korea( 1,220 robots), Germany( 449 robots) and Japan( 446 robots) but ahead of China( 166 robots).
Robot density is the number of operational industrial robots relative to the number of employees. It can cover the whole manufacturing industry or just specific industrial branches. The number of employees serves as a measure of economic size.
United States vs. China
However, said the IFR, China far outperforms the rest of the world in terms of market size.
“ Annual installations in China reached 295,000 units in 2024. This represents a global market share of 54 %. According to our estimates, installations are about ten times higher than the number in the United States. This success story is based on the country’ s national robotics strategy, which was launched ten years ago. China’ s recently published 15th Five-Year Plan( 2026 – 2030) has now placed robotics at the heart of its modern industrial system. The aim is to focus its AI research on physical applications, with robots as the main driver of economic growth,” explained the IFR.
National Robotics Strategy
North America’ s largest automation trade association, A3, has officially published and presented its‘ Vision for a National Robotics Strategy’ to lawmakers. The trade group advocates a framework for a Federal Robotics Office and a National Commission to coordinate policy, with the aim of harmonising government research and fostering publicprivate partnerships.
The proposed national strategy also calls for market-driven tax incentives, expanded technical workforce retraining, updated safety standards and a federal mandate to purchase domestic robotics technology to accelerate commercial deployment.
Outlook
The industrial modernisation outlook in North America and the U. S. remains highly positive, said the report. This is driven by accelerating factory reshoring initiatives and a persistent shortage of skilled labour. The IFR projects a resilient, long-term growth trajectory for the region’ s automation sector, as manufacturers are increasing automation investments to mitigate structural workforce gaps and as demand diversifies beyond traditional sectors. n
https
:// ifr. org /
AI as“ defining force” in cybersecurity
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping cybersecurity and is the biggest driver of change in the field, according to a new World Economic Forum report. Some 94 % of cyber leaders identify AI as a defining force and 77 % of organisations already use it in their cyber operations, according to the report.
The‘ AI and Cyber: Empowering Defenders’ report, developed in collaboration with KPMG, highlights measurable gains in cost reduction, response speed and resilience. While threat actors increasingly weaponise AI to automate deception, generate malware and scale attacks at machine speed, the report indicates that organisations deploying AI strategically are achieving significant advantages. Organisations that extensively leverage AI in security reduce average breach costs by up to US $ 1.9 million and shorten breach lifecycles by approximately 80 days, said the report.
“ AI has the potential to shift the balance towards defenders,” said Akshay Joshi,
Image: Shutterstock. com.
Head of the Centre for Cybersecurity, World Economic Forum.“ Organisations that treat it as a strategic capability, rather than a stand-alone tool, will be better placed to turn growing cyber risk into resilience and competitive advantage.”
The 2026 edition of the report focuses on how organisations are deploying AI for defence in practice. As enterprise attack surfaces expand to include hundreds of thousands of internet-facing assets, the scale and complexity of cyber risk are increasing significantly.
“ Attackers are moving faster and at greater scale than ever before. This report is a call to action for organisations to match that pace, with AI as a force multiplier for cyber defence,” said Laurent Gobbi, Partner, Global Head of Cyber & Tech Risk, KPMG.
The report emphasises that AI’ s value in cybersecurity lies in augmenting human expertise, accelerating decisions and strengthening resilience, rather than automation alone. The report highlights that its impact depends upon clear AI deployment strategy, rigorously tested use cases before scaling and strong governance and human oversight from the outset.
As cyber risks become more complex, the report calls on business and government leaders to treat AI as a foundational security capability, investing not only in technology but also in the skills, processes and governance required to defend at machine speed. n
www. weforum. org
10 | ismr. net | ISMR July / August 2026