A UR20 cobot arm being used in a palletizing application. | Credit: Universal Robots
Teradyne Robotics is ending a tough financial year with some good news. With momentum building around reshoring and a national robotics strategy, the timing for its planned U.S. headquarters opening in late 2026 couldn’t be better.
Teradyne Robotics is renovating a 67,000-sq.-ft. facility in Wixom, Mich., a suburb about 30 miles northwest of Detroit. The site will serve as the new U.S. hub for Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) and collaborative robot arm leader Universal Robots (UR), both subsidiaries of Teradyne. UR will begin operating there first, with MiR to follow.
Jean-Pierre Hathout, president of Teradyne Robotics, told The Robot Report the project has been discussed for more than a year. The facility will support manufacturing, sales, and customer training for both UR and MiR products.
Hathout said Detroit emerged as the top choice for several reasons:
- Proximity to major automotive and advanced manufacturing customers
- A deep engineering talent pool bolstered by local institutions
- A strong logistics infrastructure
- An existing Teradyne Robotics presence in nearby Novi, Mich.
“The city of Wixom welcomes Teradyne Inc. as they establish this first-of-its-kind facility that will bring advanced robotics manufacturing, service, and operations to our community,” stated Wixom Mayor Patrick Beagle. “We’re proud to be their new home and look forward to supporting the more than 200 new employees Teradyne plans to locate here as the next step in their more than 60-year history as an industry leader in the automation and robotics space.”
Amazon Robotics playing a major role?
Another major driver behind the U.S. headquarters plan is to be closer to a large e-commerce customer that Teradyne has referenced in recent months but hasn’t publicly identified. The Robot Report believes this customer is Amazon Robotics, which recently began producing its new Vulcan robot that’ll be used inside Amazon warehouses. Each Vulcan robot uses a UR cobot arm to stow and pick items from Amazon’s mobile robots.
“As you know, we’ve landed a major deal with a major e-commerce player. We want to grow with them, and one of the things that supports growing with this player is manufacturing close to their home,” said Hathout. “They have several homes in the major regions of the world. We don’t need to be in the same state as their headquarters, but we need to at least be on the same continent to better serve their distribution centers.”
The Detroit facility will be Teradyne Robotics’ third major manufacturing site globally, complementing existing production in Denmark and China. Teradyne has said in earnings calls that volume shipments to this major e-commerce customer are not expected to have a material impact on robotics revenue in 2025.
U.S. strengthens its robotics play
The announcement comes as bipartisan support grows for making robotics a pillar of U.S. competitiveness. Hathout said industry leaders, including A3, have been in discussions with lawmakers in Washington for months.
Despite being a global technology leader, the U.S. still trails countries such as South Korea, Japan, China, and Germany in robotics. Hathout said the U.S. robotics landscape is overdue for a major investment surge.
“I think it’s the right time to do this,” Hathout said. “The U.S. is a major player in the world, in technology in general, but it has to catch up in robotics. Our customers are looking to robotics not only to boost competitiveness, but also to make factory floors more attractive to the next generation of workers. With this facility, we’re investing in both automation and education.”
Hathout said that while it will take a few years to reach full scale, but he expects the Detroit facility to create more than 200 jobs and become one of the largest robotics manufacturing sites in the U.S.
Like many robotics companies, Teradyne Robotics has faced headwinds in 2025. The company laid off about 25% of its workforce across two rounds of layoffs this year as the group’s revenue has declined. Hathout, who succeeded Ujjwal Kumar as president of Teradyne Robotics in September 2025, said the Detroit project is energizing the organization.
“It’s very positive,” Hathout said. “We’re investing at a time when others are cautious. We believe things are going to get better, and we’re going to be ahead of the curve when they do because we’ll be ready. You invest at the sound of cannons.”
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