Pivotting from cars to robots: Schaeffler cuts 3,460 jobs, bets €400 million on humanoids
If you want to know why Schaeffler is all in on humanoid robots, you just found out. The German auto supply chain, which it has been huge in, is in free fall. Schaeffler just cut 3,460 jobs and closed 5 factories ... while making a €400 million bet on humanoid robots.
The Herzogenaurach-based auto parts maker announced the restructuring on November 3, targeting most of the cuts in Germany, where 3 of the 5 closing facilities are located. The savings won't materialize until 2030 thanks to about €51 million in one-off charges this year, and Schaeffler's shares are down 4.5%.
The interesting part, however, is that Schaeffler is simultaneously positioning itself as one of the most aggressive humanoid robotics players in Europe, on both sides of the deal.
Two rounds in two years
This is not Schaeffler's first restructuring.
In November 2024, the company announced 4,700 job cuts across Europe. Combined with this round, that's roughly 6,000 announced European jobs cut since late 2024 out of a global workforce of about 110,000. The €300 million in annual savings these cuts will eventually produce is the primary financial driver, but CEO Klaus Rosenfeld was blunt about the causes:
- weakened ICE vehicle demand
- delayed EV ramp-up
- Chinese competitors undercutting Schaeffler on price in both legacy bearings and new EV components
It is the same story hammering Bosch (22,000 jobs), ZF (potentially 32,000 employees affected by a planned driveline sale), and Continental (7,150 cuts, a spun-out auto division). Those 4 suppliers announced roughly 54,000 job cuts in 2024 alone.
The German auto supply chain is contracting, and Schaeffler's second round is part of that pattern.
The humanoid bet
Here's where Schaeffler diverges from the others.
The company is not just cutting costs. It is attempting a pivot into humanoid robotics on 2 fronts simultaneously: deploying robots in its own factories and supplying components to robot makers worldwide.
On the deployment side, the first wave arrives next month. Under a May 2026 agreement with UK startup Humanoid, Humanoid's robots start work at 2 German sites between December 2026 and June 2027. The tasks in Herzogenaurach include box-moving tasks; Schweinfurt runs capability testing and integration. The plan scales to at least 1,000 Humanoid robots across Schaeffler's global plants by 2032, paired with a 5-year actuator supply agreement making Schaeffler the startup's preferred joint actuator source.
Additional deals with Leju Robotics, Hexagon Robotics (1,000 units committed), and Neura Robotics (potentially 4,000 to 6,000 units of the 4NE1 model) extend the picture further.
On the supply side, Schaeffler's Q3 2026 humanoid robotics order intake reached roughly €400 million. It has 5 customer contracts in the segment, the largest with leading players in both China and the US. Rosenfeld estimates about 50% of a humanoid robot's materials bill is addressable by Schaeffler, and the company targets a 10% share of that market by 2030. It is currently in talks with approximately 45 robotics companies.
The timing challenge
The humanoid robot numbers are impressive and the strategy is coherent, but the timeline is clearly a challenge.
- The €300 million in annual savings from the job cuts arrive in 2030.
- The €400 million humanoid order book is pipeline, not revenue.
- The first Humanoid (UK) robots start in December, but "thousands globally by 2032" is a 6-year runway from today.
- Rosenfeld's stated 6% to 8% EBIT margin target runs to 2028; the current confirmed range is 3.5% to 5.5%.
That means Schaeffler is cutting jobs, shuttering factories, and displacing workers today to fund a growth story whose economics only become visible in the 2030s. And that means, unfortunately, that employees at the 5 closing sites don't get to see that part.
What it signals for Europe
Rosenfeld made a pointed claim to CNBC's humanoid interview in August: "Europe has all the prerequisites to compete with China and the U.S. on humanoids."
He may be right about components. Schaeffler's expertise in precision bearings, actuators, and high-tolerance mechanical systems maps directly onto humanoid joint requirements. The question is whether a legacy auto supplier making a hard pivot can execute at the pace of a market moving on 12-month product cycles rather than 5-year vehicle programs.
The Schaeffler announcement is not just an auto industry story. It is an early datapoint on what happens when legacy manufacturing meets humanoid robotics: some jobs end, some robots start, and the P&L gap between those 2 events is where the real risk lives.
Sources
Written by
I tell stories with data and build startups. I've raised angel and VC funds, led software companies and startups, and chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. Currently I write for Forbes, host several podcasts, and am starting up HumanoidMegaHub. I was TUNE's mobile economist and Singular's VP of Insights, built the research team at VentureBeat, and managed teams creating software for partners like Intel and Disney. In past lives I built websites, e-learning platforms, and mobile apps, and, a long time ago, was named to Folio's top 100 of the media industry's "most innovative entrepreneurs and market shaker-uppers.”