There are seven million fewer manufacturing jobs in America than there were a generation ago. And yet manufacturing still accounts for roughly a third of the U.S. economy and a third of American jobs when you include suppliers and services.
That matters because manufacturing remains one of the most important sectors of the economy. It supports entire communities. It creates good jobs, strong companies, and a middle class that can still build a life with dignity. When manufacturing grows, so does everything around it.
That’s exactly why the U.S. cannot afford to keep losing ground. Last year, China installed nine times as many industrial robots as the United States, and more than the rest of the world combined.
For too long, America treated manufacturing like a legacy industry. Something important, but not something we needed to modernize with urgency. That was a mistake. If we want to rebuild industrial strength, we need to make it easier for manufacturers to compete, grow, and automate here at home.
That is why I started Standard Bots. I kept seeing the same problem: manufacturers needed automation, but the tools were too expensive, too hard to use, and too brittle for real production environments. We wanted to build robots that ordinary factory teams could actually deploy—robots taught by demonstration, not code—so American manufacturers could do more, faster, and with less friction.
[Insert 2-3 customer examples: ie. it’s the quiche maker in michigan, it’s NASA using our robots to safely send men and women to the moon, etc etc]
Our $200 million Series C is important, but not for the usual reasons. The real significance lies in what it enables: greater capacity in the U.S., more robots built in America, and more manufacturers able to adopt automation that actually works on the factory floor.
It is about rebuilding the confidence that America can still make things at scale. That we can still compete. That we can still build the tools, factories, and companies the world depends on.
That’s the moment we’re in—and it’s also why I’ve never been more optimistic about the future of American industry.
