Shipments of professional service robots rose 24 percent to almost 250,000 units in 2025, the International Federation of Robotics said on Wednesday, in a report that treats humanoids as robotics’ newest market.
The humanoid figure was about 7,000 full-size machines, meaning taller than 140 centimetres, sold worldwide for industrial and professional use.
Most of the market is less glamorous. Transport and logistics robots accounted for 117,500 units, up 21 percent and 47 percent of the total, with hospitality and professional cleaning robots next.
Medical robots grew 19 percent, led by surgical systems, which rose 57 percent to 8,400 units. Consumer service robots, mostly household machines, climbed 37 percent to about 34.2 million.
The federation was blunt about humanoids. Most applications still need a human teleoperator, it said, and many units went to research institutions and companies gathering real-world data to train AI models rather than doing productive work.
IFR president Jane Heffner said service robots are expanding into everyday operations, with double-digit growth across all three segments. Safety standards, high training and maintenance costs and the lack of a strong business case still hold back wider use, the federation said, particularly in industry.
For startups raising money at multibillion-dollar valuations on humanoid promises, 7,000 is the number to set beside the pitch deck. The IFR warns against comparing figures across its reports, so there is no clean growth rate yet. Next year’s count will be the first real measure of how quickly the gap closes.
