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Addverb takes robots from warehouses to chip fabs

By Sohail Khan 22 September 2026, 1:09 pm

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Business News›AI›AI Insights›Addverb moves beyond warehouses, sees semiconductors as next big robotics opportunity

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Addverb moves beyond warehouses, sees semiconductors as next big robotics opportunity
Synopsis

As semiconductor facilities become more sophisticated, Addverb sees demand for systems that can move, store and retrieve components with greater precision and traceability.

Global robotics and warehouse automation company Addverb is moving beyond warehouse automation, with semiconductors emerging as a new area of demand with India expanding its chip manufacturing ecosystem.

“Right now, I think semiconductors is the sector seeing the most demand apart from our regular business,” Addverb co-founder and chief business officer Bir Singh told ET AI at SEMICON India 2026.

Started a decade ago with four people building automation systems for warehouses, Addverb is building machines for material movement inside semiconductor facilities, and companies manufacturing solar panels, new-energy and electric vehicle manufacturing.

“We started as a warehouse automation company,” Singh said. “About two or three years ago, we realised that we had all the capabilities to build something much more high-tech. So, we asked ourselves, why can’t we build machines with AI inside them?”

Addverb calls this “embedded AI”. With this shift, the company has moved from autonomous mobile robots, shuttles and stacker cranes to humanoids, robotic arms, quadrupeds and collaborative robots.

Also Read: Humanoid robot sales tally hit 7,000 globally last year

The company sees India’s push into new manufacturing as an opportunity to scale those capabilities.

“We thought that since we have all the capabilities, why not enter these areas as well?” Singh said. “These are very futuristic sectors and the government has big plans for them.”

The opportunity is not limited to robots working directly on production lines. As semiconductor facilities become more sophisticated, Addverb sees demand for systems that can move, store and retrieve components with greater precision and traceability.

At SEMICON India, the company showcased Vertix, a compact storage solution for SMD (Surface-Mount Device) and SMT (Surface-Mount Technology) components, alongside its newer robotics portfolio.

However, Singh said the biggest challenge in entering these industries is not necessarily technology. The harder part is establishing credibility when entering industries where companies like Addverb do not have a long operating history.

“The biggest bottleneck is that we are new. From a technology perspective, we don't think we are behind. But, when you are not experienced in a particular sector, the entry barrier can sometimes be a little difficult,” he explained.

Robots won’t replace humans

Despite Addverb deepening its focus on robotics, Singh does not see a completely human-free future of factories and warehouses. He believes robots should take on the tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or physically demanding for people.

“If people have to lift very heavy loads, it is not good for their long-term health,” he said.

Also Read: The Indian workers training AI robots to take their jobs

Referring to an example of a poisonous gas leak at a factory, he said, instead of sending a person into such a dangerous environment to close a valve, a robot could perform the task.

The same logic applies to jobs more broadly, he said. Robotics will change the nature of work rather than eliminating humans from the workplace. “When computers did not exist, there were typewriter jobs. Once computers came in, the nature of those jobs changed. Everybody will evolve.”

Building robots that can learn

One of Addverb’s biggest shifts as per Singh is towards Physical AI.

Along with Vertix, the company showcased JEN 6, a robotic arm designed for research into Physical AI, vision-language-action models, reinforcement learning and robotic manipulation; and Elixis-W, a Made-in-India wheeled humanoid robot, which was launched in February 2026.

Singh said Addverb initially built the robotic arms to generate training data. In the company's setup, a human can control one pair of arms while another pair replicates the movements. Cameras capture the actions, while motor torque and other information are also recorded.

“Whenever I perform an action, it becomes a data point,” he said.

That data can then be used to train models that allow robots to perform the task autonomously.

Addverb eventually plans to use these systems for assembly lines, including applications involving small and critical components. It is also building such systems for companies that want to collect physical-world data for their own AI models.

From factories to homes?

For now, Addverb's focus remains firmly industrial. The company is experimenting with some retail applications, including folding T-shirts and assembly, but Singh said consumer applications are still some distance away.

Nevertheless, he expects robots to eventually move beyond factories into offices, retail spaces and homes, which could see them handling everyday tasks such as preparing food or assisting people, although Addverb is not yet building for that market.

The company's roadmap is also moving beyond wheeled humanoids like its Elixis-W. Addverb is developing a bipedal robot that can operate across different types of terrain.

“The advantage of two legs is that these robots can operate on different kinds of terrain,” Singh said. “It can maneuver like us across different kinds of terrain.”

The company plans to launch the biped soon.

Addverb's ambitions extend beyond India as well. CEO Sangeet Kumar told Bloomberg in June that the company was seeking to raise more than $100 million to invest in humanoid and quadruped robots, AI and data collection.

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