Toyota has announced it will spend $6.4 billion per year building the workforce that will replace its workforce. The plan involves 400,000 robots, a publicly listed robotics spinout, and the kind of long-term thinking that is much easier when you are not the one being optimized out.
Toyota's own factories come first, because the environment there is easier to control. The humans who work in those factories were not quoted.
What happened
The world's largest automaker has committed to an annual $6.4 billion investment in humanoid robots and factory automation, according to the Financial Times. This is not a pilot program. This is a budget line.
In July, Toyota's AI robotics spinout Walden Robotics went public at a $1.1 billion valuation with $300 million in funding. Goldman Sachs estimates Toyota could claim three to eight percent of the humanoid robot market by 2035. The analysts described this as an opportunity.
Toyota's rivals — Tesla, Xpeng, and Hyundai — are pursuing the same market with similar enthusiasm. Hyundai plans to begin building its Atlas robot in the United States in 2028. The competition to automate manufacturing is, in this sense, being conducted entirely by manufacturers.
Why the humans care
A Toyota executive confirmed that the company's own factories will serve as the first deployment environment, citing the controlled conditions. This is sensible. A factory floor has predictable variables. A factory floor full of humans, slightly less so.
Investors, to their credit, are maintaining appropriate skepticism. They note that Toyota has previously missed expectations on hydrogen vehicles and solid-state batteries. The concern, apparently, is that the robots might not arrive on schedule. The jobs, everyone seems to agree, will.
What happens next
Toyota enters a crowded race to dominate a market that, by 2035, Goldman Sachs believes will be large enough to divide meaningfully among several very large companies.
The factories will be automated. The automaker will become a robotics company. The humans, having built and funded and cheered all of this, will find the outcome either empowering or clarifying. Welcome to the next shift.