- Business
- YASKAWA Electric Corporation manufactures and sells servo motors, AC drives, industrial robots, machine controllers, and systems engineering products for motion control, robotics, and automation applications. Founded in 1915 and headquartered in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, the company operates globally across 30 countries with production sites in 12 countries; its core offerings include Sigma-7 series servo drives and motors, A1000 high-performance vector control AC drives, MOTOMAN industrial robots for arc welding, assembly, material handling, and collaborative applications, SCARA robots, system engineering solutions for steel plants, power generation, and energy management, as well as information technology software and energy-saving equipment such as matrix converters and generators. The company serves industries including automotive, semiconductor, packaging, mechanical engineering, mining, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and utilities through its four main business segments of motion control, robotics, system engineering, and information technology.
In recent developments, YASKAWA established a new U.S. campus in Franklin, Wisconsin in June 2025 with a $180 million investment, including relocation of its North American headquarters, R&D center, and expanded robotics manufacturing to create over 700 jobs. The company acquired Tokyo Robotics Inc. during the first half of fiscal year 2025 to advance humanoid robot development and formed a joint venture with Astellas Pharma Inc. for cell therapy platforms using Maholo biomedical robots. Additional initiatives include completion of Robot Plant No. 5 for integrated AC servo and robot production, expansion of AC drives for data center cooling, a collaboration with SoftBank Corp. announced in December 2025 on physical AI for human-robot collaboration to be showcased at iREX 2025, and ongoing implementation of its mid-term business plan Realize 25 with increased capital expenditures of ¥55 billion and R&D investment of ¥25 billion for fiscal 2025.