Iván Hernández Dalas: It’s time to recreate China’s robotics strategy in the U.S.
Terabase is an example of a U.S. startup competing with China’s energy sector. Source: Terabase Energy Inc.
The U.S. is losing the game. We all want to leave our country more prosperous, secure, and sustainable for future generations, with a thriving domestic manufacturing sector. We’re locked into a constant competition with China in innovation, but while America is still pursuing this future, China’s industry has already been successful.
Just look at China’s electric vehicle (EV) sector: it’s now a massive economic engine for the country‘s manufacturing base, spawning giants like CATL and BYD while contributing to significant improvements in air quality across Chinese cities. This success story offers a roadmap that we can and should follow domestically.
However, we’re well behind, and our only path to competitiveness lies through rapidly advancing automation and manufacturing efficiency—with robotics at the core of this strategy.
State of robotics adoption in the U.S.
A large focus of the new administration has been to bring manufacturing stateside, with tariffs and other policies incentivizing domestic production. But this means very little considering the massive manufacturing labor shortage. According to the Manufacturing Institute, the industry will need 3.8 million additional workers by 2033, but as many as 2.1 million will go unfilled — with an opportunity cost of about $1 trillion a year to the U.S. economy.
While concerns about labor displacement are valid and require proactive solutions, the reality is stark. If we want more industrialization in the U.S., the only path to growth and competitiveness on a global scale is through the uptake of advanced automation and robotics. If we don’t, we’re not even in the race.
The U.S. is already seeing large-scale private investment into next-generation robotics applications, with robotics-related startups securing around $6.1 billion in venture capital investments last year.
Fueled by breakthroughs in computer vision and foundation AI models, what it means to be state-of-the-art is shifting. It will soon be possible that robots will be able to accomplish more and more complex tasks on their own, adapting to their environments and making decisions without relying on predefined logic or human teleoperation. This evolution promises efficiency gains, improved productivity through round-the-clock operation, and automation of tasks previously deemed impossible.
However, to meet this potential and translate this momentum in industrial deployment, the country needs a national strategy. Admittedly, we’ve had the opportunity to make meaningful gains domestically with technology that has already been in existence for many years. We now stand at yet another technological inflection point, and to fail to engage with strategic clarity and a unified vision would be missing an opportunity we may not see again.
The potential for economic growth and, I’d argue, accelerated decarbonization as a co-benefit, is enormous. Today’s global average robot density is still relatively low at 162 units per 10,000 manufacturing employees.
Editor’s note: RoboBusiness 2025, which will be on Oct. 15 and 16 in Santa Clara, Calif., will feature a panel on “Closing the Robotics Gap With China.” Register now to attend.
Robotics can play a role in addressing the climate
The long history of robotics is deeply rooted in the pursuit of efficiency and safety. From the early days of automotive manufacturing, with robots like Unimate shouldering dangerous tasks, to today’s agile mobile robots and sophisticated drones, the trajectory has been clear: Robotics enable us to do more with less.
These advancements laid the groundwork for the resource efficiency that is crucial in our fight to mitigate climate impacts as our economy continues to grow. It has the potential to make various climate technologies more effective and also meet labor demands of the climate industry. Recent estimates indicate an additional 13 million workers will be required to meet the needs from “green growth” across the world’s biggest economies.
Robotics are already enabling meaningful market growth for decarbonization use cases. Often in use cases that fall under the “4 Ds” framework: dull, dirty, dangerous, and dear (expensive) tasks. These are precisely the areas where robots can provide the most significant decarbonization co-benefits.
Certain sectors — such as grid upgrades, manufacturing, and mining — can capture disproportionate benefits by adding robots to the workforce. They aid in avoiding labor shortages and perform operations in extreme conditions unsafe for people.
From automating solar farm construction, EVs, and battery manufacturing to enhancing wildfire prevention and land use management, American startups are already leveraging robotics to tackle some of the most pressing environmental challenges.
The energy and industrial infrastructure sectors are already embracing this potential. Companies like Terabase are scaling robotics for solar installation, increasing labor productivity by 2x and dramatically reducing costs.
In land management, Kodama Robotics and BurnBot are emerging as crucial tools for wildfire prevention and suppression, and for more efficient reforestation efforts. For aviation, a sector that is notoriously difficult to decarbonize, Pyka is using autonomous aircraft for cargo delivery and crop dusting to reduce CO2 emissions by over 90%.
Even in mature markets like manufacturing, articulated robotic arms and autonomous logistics robots have long been recognized for their role in driving productivity, efficiency gains, and, consequently, emissions reductions.
Assuming a 5% emissions improvement across the whole industrial light manufacturing economy, this could be a reduction of over 30 million tons of CO2 emissions. And, that’s just the start.
Learning from China’s Success
China has become the global leader in both industrialization and the emerging climate economy as a result of its robotics and automation advances and widespread adoption. It has dominated market expansion across solar cells, EVs, batteries, and other crucial technologies. In turn, decarbonization technologies have proven to be massive economic growth drivers in China.
We’re now seeing the flywheel effect. Robotics offers a clear pathway to greater efficiency, reduced emissions, and a more sustainable future. It has long been core to scaling emerging climate technologies, and to make the U.S. a compelling and competitive manufacturing powerhouse, we must embrace automation to even be in the game.
The current technical inflection point makes this opportunity even more exciting, but potential alone is insufficient. We all want more domestic manufacturing and communities that are clean and safe from increasing climate disasters. Our industrialization pursuits and the emerging global climate economy are inexplicably tied.
The time to invest, innovate, and integrate robotics into our climate strategy is now, before the opportunity to make a meaningful decarbonization impact disappears. America has the innovation capacity and entrepreneurial drive to lead this transition — we simply need the strategic vision and commitment to make it happen.
About the author
Katie Clasen is a principal at Prelude Ventures, where she specializes in industrial decarbonization, advanced manufacturing, energy storage, and minerals. Prelude’s notable energy storage investments include Form Energy and Redoxblox, a novel thermal battery system for industrial use cases.
Before joining Prelude Ventures, Clasen worked in technical and commercial roles across the climate and energy sectors, including at Shell and Sila Nanotechnologies, where she worked on advanced battery technologies.
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