Signal Amazon reported over 750,000 robots by 2024, about a third of its workforce

Summary

This signal uses one company to show how far robots have spread in logistics. Amazon started deploying robots in its warehouses in 2012 and had more than 200,000 of them by 2019. By 2024 the figure passed 750,000, which the report equates to one third of the company's workforce. Logistics is identified as the sector driving demand for service robots, whose sales have now overtaken those of industrial robots. The growth rests on improvements in computer vision and machine learning that let robots handle changing environments, alongside falling costs. The case suggests how quickly robots can scale within a single large employer once they become economically competitive.