Alliance pour les Sciences et l'Intelligence des Machines Opérées et Virtuelles
Alliance for the Sciences and Intelligence of Operated and Virtual Machines
Thinking through the robotic revolution. What is at stake for France and Europe.
An independent and non-partisan association, founded in Paris in 2026, to think, analyse, convene and put forward concrete proposals on everything the robotic turn raises. It brings together business leaders and researchers, senior civil servants and investors, teachers and engineers, and leaves the choice of the subjects it works on to its members.
Robotics is nearing its tipping point. Machines are leaving the laboratory for factories, warehouses and public spaces: autonomous mobility, manipulation, humanoids, embedded artificial intelligence. That shift raises questions of considerable scale: investment and financing, the transformation of value chains, employment and skills, the organisation of work, standards and certification, industrial sovereignty. Yet while thinking on artificial intelligence is now well under way, thinking on robotics is still struggling to take shape.
Robotics in 2025: three families, three markets
01 / 06
Industrial robots
603,000
industrial robots sold worldwide in 2025
2025 sales: 603,000
Including 354,000 in China and 4,500 in France.
Robotic line, Poland
Service robots
250,000
professional service robots sold in 2025
2025 sales: 250,000
Logistics, cleaning, inspection, hospitality: in warehouses, hospitals and airports.
Service robots, China, August 2026
Humanoids
7,000
humanoids sold worldwide in 2025
2025 sales: 7,000
The robots all over social media. 174 manufacturers, more than half of them in China.
Optimus (Tesla) in the crowd, 2024
In briefIn 2025, nearly 90 times more industrial robots were sold than humanoids, and 35 times more service robots. The bars share the same scale.
By 2035, all three families grow, humanoids the fastest
02 / 06
Robots sold or shipped per year, from 2025 to the latest forecast
Industrial robots
×1.3in four years
603,000 sold in 2025, 806,000 expected in 2029.
Service robots
×11in five years
250,000 sold in 2025, 2.8 million mobile robots expected in 2030.
Humanoids
×930in ten years
7,000 in 2025, 0.9 to 1.2 million expected in 2030, 6.5 million in 2035.
Log scale: each gridline is ten times the previous one. Solid dot: actual 2025. Service 2030: mobile robots.
In briefStarting from 7,000 units, humanoids are the family whose forecasts are rising fastest. Goldman Sachs raised its 2035 forecast nearly fivefold in September 2026: these are orders of magnitude, not certainties.
Industrial robots: the US and China speed up, Europe slows down
03 / 06
Industrial robots installed in 2025
China354,200+20%
United States38,400+12%
European Union60,500−11%
Germany24,800−8%
France4,500−8%
Year-on-year change. Bars share the same scale. The US overtakes Japan to become the world's second-largest market; Germany accounts for 41% of the EU market, and France is the EU's third-largest.
4.6 days
At the 2025 pace, that is all it takes China to install as many robots as France does in a year.
Robot density, 2024
robots in operation per 10,000 manufacturing employees
Germany449
United States307
European Union231
France195
China*166
World average132
* Revised after Beijing raised its reported manufacturing employment: the robot fleet did not shrink, the number of workers counted grew. Before revision: 470 (2023).
In briefChina alone installs more robots than the rest of the world combined (+20%), and the US becomes the second-largest market (+12%). The EU is down 11%, dragged by the auto industry. France, Europe's third-largest market, has half Germany's robot density.
Service robots: already a real market, led by logistics
04 / 06
Service robots sold in 2025, by application
Transport and logisticswarehouse robots, autonomous forklifts, follow-me carts117,50047% of sales
Hospitality and servicestable service, hotel delivery55,900
Professional cleaningautonomous scrubbers and sweepers44,600+40% year on year
Agriculturemilking, weeding, harvesting17,100
Inspection and maintenancepatrol robots, quadrupeds, drones6,500+83% year on year
Other applicationsdifference from the published total≈ 8,300
Established manufacturers
More than 1,000
service robot makers tracked by the IFR
China
Pudu, Keenon, Gausium, Geek+, Hai Robotics, Unitree
United States
Boston Dynamics, Locus Robotics, Brain Corp, Tennant, Knightscope
Europe
Kärcher, Nilfisk, ANYbotics, Magazino
France
Exotec, Balyo, Shark Robotics, Naïo Technologies
Examples, not an exhaustive list.
In brief250,000 robots sold in 2025, up 24% year on year. Logistics accounts for nearly half of sales, while cleaning and inspection are growing fastest. Many are rented by the month, which lowers the barrier to entry.
Humanoid robots: out of the lab, not yet on the factory floor
05 / 06
The market
≈ 7,000
humanoids over 1.40 m tall sold worldwide in 2025.
174 manufacturers, more than half of them in China.
The bottleneck
90%
success rate: good enough for a demo video
vs.
99.9%
success rate: what a production line demands
According to the IFR, humanoids have not yet moved from the lab to pilot projects.
In France
A few dozen humanoids in operation, a hundred at most. Carmakers testing them run fewer than ten each.
Wandercraft
UMA
Enchanted Tools
Genesis AI
Humanoid demo on a mock production line, World Robot Conference, Beijing, August 2026
In briefHumanoids draw the attention and the capital, but they still number in the thousands. Whether they make it onto the factory floor will depend on reliability, not on demos.
Where the new robotics fits: labor is short, and the shortage will grow
06 / 06
The new robotics: mobile, AI-driven machines that leave the factory and go where labor is short.
Today
43.8%
of 2026 hiring plans in France are considered difficult (France Travail).
The IFR lists labor shortages among the main drivers of automation.
Population aging is already locked in
402026
492040
622070
people 65 and over per 100 people aged 20 to 64 in France (Insee).
Tomorrow
5 to 6 million
fewer working-age people in the euro area by 2035, even counting immigration (BNP Paribas, May 2026).
35 million
fewer in the European Union by 2050 (European Commission).
Rungis wholesale market, at night
In briefLabor shortages explain part of today's sales. Demographics say they are here to stay, and will get worse.
Our areas of work
01
Capital and investment
How can manufacturers and equipment be financed?
Directing public and private capital towards robotics, from financing manufacturers to the arrangements that make equipment affordable, from leasing to robotics as a service.
02
Technological leadership
Where should we aim for excellence, and what must we master?
Telling apart the building blocks, components, software and data, where France and Europe can aim for the front rank, and those where dependence should be chosen rather than imposed.
03
Adoption and productivity
How can robotics be turned into prosperity?
Understanding what holds back the spread of robots in companies, and what would turn them into a lever for productivity.
04
Work and skills
How can we robotise without social fracture?
Understanding the effects of robotisation on employment and preparing the qualifications that will go with it, in initial as well as in continuing training.
05
Ethics and standards
What rules for autonomous machines?
Setting the safety, liability and certification conditions that will make these machines acceptable, and turning European exigency into an asset rather than a brake.
06
Europe and geopolitics
What path between Beijing and Washington?
Aligning the French position within the European framework, and defining what Europe can contribute in its own right in a world where robotic powers will coexist.
Our events
Every week
La Lettre A.S.I.M.O.V.
World robotics read from France and Europe, in a letter that is short and sourced. Published in French.
The Robotics Dinners. Around a guest of honour and a theme, some twenty public and private decision-makers meet under the Chatham House rule. Each dinner gives rise to a cahier, a working paper.
Latest dinner, October 2026:« Robots : produire ou importer ? Une question de souveraineté » (Robots: produce or import? A question of sovereignty). Guest of honour: Benjamin Haddad, Minister of State for Europe.
It will be held in 2027 at Sciences Po Paris. A working day between those who think about robotics and those who build it.
The livre blanc, the white paper drawn from the work of the day, carries its lessons to companies and institutions.
In the press
Le FigaroOp-ed
2 November 2026
« Robotique : la fenêtre française, entre Pékin et Washington »
(Robotics: the French window, between Beijing and Washington)
By Anastasia Colosimo and Grégory Lenne
Beijing holds the bodies, Washington holds the brains. France and Europe still have a hand to play, on three conditions: produce at home, equip our factories and train those who will run them, draw on everyone without serving anyone.
« Les robots pourraient permettre de relocaliser des industries en France »
(Robots could bring industries back to France)
With Anastasia Colosimo and Grégory Lenne, interview by Grégoire Arnould
Robots already ready to deploy, obstacles to adoption, jobs destroyed and created, chosen dependencies: the two founders of A.S.I.M.O.V. explain why France must anticipate the robotic shift, and how it can turn it into an opportunity to reindustrialise.
From the myths that haunt our relationship with machines to the global contest over humanoids, a 45 minute conversation on the place France and Europe can take in the next industrial revolution.
Polytechnicien, formerly an inspector in the General Inspectorate of Société Générale. Senior Manager at Bain & Company.
Anastasia Colosimo
Secretary General · Co-founder
Doctor of political science, former adviser at the Élysée. Chief Transformation Officer and Head of Business Development at Ellipse Group.
Étienne Dignat
Director of studies and institutional relations
Doctor of political science (Sciences Po), author of La rançon de la terreur (PUF). Adviser to the Director-General of UNESCO.
Laurent Ladouari
Director of imagination
Science-fiction writer, polytechnicien, and a specialist in collective intelligence.
Thaïssia Colosimo
Treasurer
Graduate of ESSEC. Project officer in the office of the Chairman and Chief Executive of Thales.
Join A.S.I.M.O.V.
Joining A.S.I.M.O.V. means taking part, alongside your peers, in a body of thinking that will lastingly shape the place of France and Europe in the robotic revolution.
