In the German town of Bühl, between the Black Forest and the Rhine Plain, something unprecedented will begin from August 2027: the first series production of humanoid robots in Europe. Bosch will manufacture them for the London-based startup Humanoid. The Bühl plant is today known for electric drives. In two years, a technology that is just emerging from research will move into series production here.
The startup behind the project
Humanoid was founded in 2024 in London by Artem Sokolov, who previously led his family's manufacturing company to annual revenue of a billion dollars. In July 2026, the company closed a Series A funding round of 152 million dollars at a valuation of 1.35 billion dollars. According to the company, this makes Humanoid Europe's first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn.
Investors in the round include Prime Movers Lab, Bosch, Schaeffler, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital and Aglaé Ventures. For observers of European technology, the round signals that European capital is beginning to flow into humanoid robotics, a field previously dominated by US and Chinese players.
Wheeled, not bipedal: What HMND 01 really is
The company's name is misleading. The HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled is not a two-legged robot from science fiction, but a wheeled machine. The device is 220 centimeters tall, weighs 300 kilograms and moves with an omnidirectional drive at speeds up to 7.2 kilometers per hour. It features 29 active degrees of freedom, interchangeable hands (five-finger hand or parallel gripper) and a payload capacity of 15 kilograms up to two meters high. Operating time extends up to four hours.
On board: an NVIDIA Jetson Thor processor and KinetIQ, a proprietary four-layer AI stack. The concept is described as a "mobile manipulator": a wheeled robot with humanlike upper body for work in factories and warehouses. In a pilot test at the Bühl plant in March 2026, an HMND 01 independently moved boxes of various sizes and weights between conveyor belts and wagons.
Schaeffler as first major customer
Humanoid secured its most significant order in May 2026. Schaeffler, the Franconian automotive and industrial supplier, signed a binding framework agreement to deploy thousands of robots in German manufacturing facilities. Initial units are expected to go live by the end of 2026.
Schaeffler itself is undergoing difficult transformation: the company is cutting jobs and relocating capacity. Investment in autonomous robotics is part of a strategy to reduce manufacturing costs through automation in the long term. The relationship between Bosch, Schaeffler and Humanoid represents an industrial ecosystem: Bosch manufactures, Schaeffler purchases, both invest.
The Bühl plant and what Bosch risks
The Bosch plant in Bühl currently employs around 2,700 people but is expected to cut around 1,200 jobs by 2030. The new robot production line will initially employ only a few dozen workers. Bosch sees it nonetheless as a strategic investment: significant production capacity reserves and the goal of becoming a reference manufacturer for a future technology.
For Bosch, the engagement carries genuine risk. As a contract manufacturer for a startup with no product in series maturity, the corporation ties up capacity in a technology whose market success is uncertain. Industry analysts view the industrial robotics market as one of the strongest growth fields of the coming decade. Drivers include skilled labor shortages, rising labor costs in Europe and Asia, and growing demand for flexible automation solutions.
When Bühl becomes a reference site
The production roadmap calls for: beta version by end of 2026, gamma model in Bühl from August 2027, mass production from 2028. The Bühl plant would thus become the world's first Bosch location where the company industrializes humanoid technology.
The competition is fierce: Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, Agility Robotics and Tesla with the Optimus robot are working on similar concepts, mostly focused on bipedal systems. Humanoid's bet on wheels instead of legs is a deliberate design choice: wheels are more stable, energy-efficient and practical in industrial environments with level floors. Whether this approach prevails against bipedal systems long-term will be determined by the market. The first series test launches in Bühl from 2027.