What Remained of the Show

In December 2025 the heads of Siemens and Schaeffler stood on a stage with a Chinese robot. In January 2026 Roland Busch celebrated the revolution of the factory with Jensen Huang in Las Vegas. We described this at the time in “Spectators in Their Own House”. Ten months later we can count what has come of it.

I. 3 November

On 3 November 2026 Schaeffler presented its quarterly figures and on the same day announced a new savings programme. In Europe 3,460 jobs will go, 2,660 of them in Germany. Four German plants are to close: Dortmund with 430 employees, Schwalbach with 385, Berlin with 270 and Morbach with 160. Further jobs will go in Höchstadt, Erlangen and Schweinfurt, among others. Adding earlier programmes and partial retirement, Schaeffler loses 18 per cent of its German workforce. The company called this a “clear commitment to Germany as a location”.

On the same day the business press carried the other story: Schaeffler as Germany’s winner in humanoid robotics. Both stories are true. One only has to put them side by side.

II. What Schaeffler has built

After the appearance with the Unitree, Rosenfeld did not sit still. In January 2026 Schaeffler entered a partnership with Humanoid, a young robot maker from London. In March came the partnership with Leju Robotics in China, which we described in “The Final Sale”. In May the contract with Humanoid became binding: Schaeffler is to supply more than half of the joint actuators for its wheeled robots, a seven-figure number by 2031. In June Schaeffler took part in the funding round of Neura Robotics in Metzingen.

That is more than we expected in January. The charge that nobody calls Metzingen no longer applies to Schaeffler in that form.

But the scale is modest. The robotics order backlog stands at 400 million euros, spread over several years. That is 1.7 per cent of a single year’s revenue. The e-mobility division alone made an operating loss of 571 million euros in the first nine months of 2026. Nine months of losses in one division weigh more than the entire robotics business over years.

And in all this Schaeffler is what it always was: a supplier. It delivers gears, bearings and drives. Others build the robot, in London, in Beijing, in Metzingen. The intelligence comes from Nvidia.

III. Who comes into the halls

The contract with Humanoid has a second half. Schaeffler is buying not only robot know-how but robots. More than 1,000 machines from Humanoid are to work in Schaeffler’s plants by 2032, rented as a service including maintenance and software. The first will enter production before the end of 2026, in Herzogenaurach and Schweinfurt. They are to move boxes, transport material and take over repetitive work.

Schaeffler’s head of production said this year that this makes automation cases economical that previously did not pay off. In “Who Owns the Deserted Hall?” we asked who owns the returns of such halls. Whether a robot in Schweinfurt replaces a particular job, we do not know. All that is certain is that in Schweinfurt both happen at once: the robots come, and jobs go.

IV. Where the money goes

Three figures from the half-year results belong here.

The financial result was minus 215 million euros, almost half of operating profit. Of every euro the plants earn, almost fifty cents go again on interest and other financing costs.

Free cash flow was minus 300 million euros.

Nevertheless, in the same half-year 296 million euros in dividends were paid out, including the shares of minority shareholders in subsidiaries. The majority shareholder is the Schaeffler family. The payout was not earned from current business. The restructuring is paid for with 2,660 jobs.

V. What became of Las Vegas

At Siemens the balance is friendlier, at least for the shareholders. At CES the partnership with Nvidia was expanded into an “operating system for industrial AI”. In the first fiscal quarter orders rose by ten per cent, and in April the share price was about a third above the previous year. In the electronics plant in Erlangen Siemens shows what software and simulation are supposed to achieve. Siemens cites savings of 20 per cent and more. These figures have not been independently verified.

And who works as a robot in this showcase plant? An HMND 01 from Humanoid in London, controlled with Nvidia’s technology. The chip is American, the robot British, the hall German. Siemens earns as outfitter and intermediary, and not badly. But the two parts that the next wave is about, the chip and the robot, Siemens does not build.

In October Jensen Huang came to Berlin. He said the next wave of AI is physical, and that this is where Germany’s strength lies. Chancellor Merz signed a declaration of intent on physical AI with Nvidia, with no budget and no timetable. Merz announced he wants to meet Huang at least once a year. Nvidia intends to invest in four German start-ups; no amounts were given.

VI. And Metzingen?

Neura Robotics, the “last chance” of our January text, announced funding of up to 1.4 billion dollars in June. That is a lot of money, and it is good news. But it is worth looking closely at who is paying. The round is led by Tether, the issuer of a cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar. Amazon, Nvidia and Qualcomm join in, on the German side Bosch and Schaeffler, plus the European Investment Bank. Tether wants to build its digital wallet into Neura’s robots because, according to Tether, truly autonomous robots need financial tools. According to Bloomberg, the money is only paid out if certain targets are met. Which ones is not known.

So the “last chance” lives. It is led by a crypto company.

And it has been given a new role. In the same days in which Schaeffler announced the closure of four plants, Chancellor Merz and Digital Minister Wildberger shook hands with a Neura robot at the Digital Summit in Berlin. The F.A.Z. set the figures beside it: in 2025 around 286 billion dollars flowed into AI in the USA, China plans around 295 billion in state funds, in Germany it was around 3.9 billion. Once again the robot was a stage prop, like the Unitree in December. Only this time it comes from Metzingen.

VII. What follows

In January we described two German captains of industry as spectators. Ten months later they are no longer spectators. They have become suppliers. Siemens supplies the factory in which American chips control British robots. Schaeffler supplies the joints for robots that others build, and rents these robots for its own halls while closing four plants. That is more than watching. It is the role German industry has mastered best for decades: the second row, precise, reliable and replaceable as soon as someone else can do it more cheaply.

Whether someone else can do it more cheaply will be decided at Schaeffler not in robotics but in manufacturing. Chinese manufacturers are already developing cheaper drives. The workers in Dortmund, Schwalbach, Berlin and Morbach no longer have to wait for that.

Further reading: Spectators in Their Own House · The Final Sale · Who Owns the Deserted Hall? · Interest Is Not the Culprit