The true cost of industrial robots varies from $2 to over $35 per hour depending on utilisation, not just purchase price. A robot's economic value depends on how many hours it actually works in messy real-world conditions.
01Summary
- 01A Roland Berger study put running costs at $2 per hour, excluding purchase; JPMorgan estimates $10–12 per hour including hardware; early deployments report over $35 per hour.
- 02Agility Robotics' Digit robots logged over 65,000 hours across nine customer sites, with net sales of $1.78 million against a $140.2 million operating loss in its S-4 filing.
- 03Agility's own model shows a $400,000 robot over five years costs about $40 per hour on one shift but $20 per hour on two shifts; it becomes cheaper than a $30 worker only above 2,700 hours per year.
- 04A $90,000 industrial robot amortised over five years at 2,000 hours per year contributes about $9 per hour in hardware, rising to $18 if utilisation halves.
- 05High utilisation alone cannot save a robot that fails when conditions vary; factories and warehouses present constant exceptions from ideal lab conditions.
02Why it matters
These cost figures determine whether physical AI becomes a trillion-dollar labour market or remains a collection of expensive pilots. Operations leaders evaluating automation must focus on utilisation and reliability, not just theoretical hourly rates.
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