The robots have won. The smart trade now is investing in companies that make them.

MW The robots have won. The smart trade now is investing in companies that make them.

By Charlie Garcia

Amazon's million-robot army ends the need for 160,000 new jobs. Walmart, Target and other retailers are reaching similar conclusions.

Amazon.com uses its Proteus robots to carry carts full of packages at the company's warehouses.

Everyone's terrified Amazon's (AMZN) robots are coming for their jobs. Wrong nightmare. The jobs never existed in the first place.

Amazon crossed the one-million-robot threshold in 2025. Politicians prepared speeches about automation displacement. Economists dusted off their Universal Basic Income models. Cable news booked panels to discuss whether robots have souls.

The real trade isn't robots versus workers. It's investing in who's selling robots.

Amazon's Shreveport, La., warehouse runs with 25% fewer humans, ships 25% faster and costs 40% less per package. These aren't jobs being eliminated. They're jobs that Amazon calculated cost more than a Proteus autonomous mobile robot. Proteus doesn't call in sick, doesn't file workers' comp and doesn't require bathroom breaks. Amazon expects that, by 2027, automation will have avoided the need to hire 160,000 U.S. workers - saving 30 cents per package. Morgan Stanley calculates $9 billion in annual savings by 2030.

That's not dystopia. That's a margin story with a ticker symbol.

Read: Amazon reportedly plans to cut 30,000 jobs. The nation's second-biggest private employer is remaking its workforce.

Everyone's running the same math

Every retailer with a loading dock is running the same numbers and reaching the same conclusion: robots beat humans on a 10-year IRR basis.

Amazon's calculation isn't proprietary. Every retailer with a loading dock is running the same numbers and reaching the same conclusion: Robots beat humans on a 10-year IRR basis.

Walmart $(WMT)$ spent $520 million buying 400 Symbotic $(SYM)$ systems. Target (TGT) is retrofitting supply chains with AI-driven inventory management, which is corporate-speak for "we're also buying robots because Walmart bought robots."

UBS surveyed 130 warehouse managers. They're spending $1.5 million each on automation in 2025. About 34% are increasing budgets by 20%. Current automation penetration is 15%.

This is the first inning of a very long, very profitable game.

The debate will continue over job displacement and Universal Basic Income. That's philosophy. The purchase orders are economics - and these four publicly traded companies are converting retailer panic into revenue.

1. ABB - The Swiss sold the robots: ABB (CH:ABBN) (ABBNY) in October sold its entire robotics division to Japan's SoftBank for $5.4 billion. SoftBank once invested $4.4 billion in WeWork, so their judgment is questionable. But $5.4 billion is real money.

ABB is deploying that cash into electrification and data centers. Data centers represent 7% of total group revenue, up from 6% in 2024. AI needs electricity to train models that replace workers. ABB is selling infrastructure for both ends of that transaction. Meanwhile, the company posted $9.1 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 9%. Free cash flow jumped 32% to $1.6 billion. Order backlog: $25.1 billion.

Counterintuitively, selling robots makes ABB a better automation play. You get the industrial scale without the commodity hardware margins.

2. FANUC - The Japanese quality play: FANUC (JP:6954) makes robots that don't spontaneously catch fire or develop existential crises. The brand is synonymous with precision robotics - machines that weld things together instead of achieving sentience and unionizing.

For the first half of fiscal 2025, FANUC posted net sales of $2.79 billion and an operating margin of 21.1%. That margin matters because it shows how much cash FANUC keeps from every dollar of sales before taxes and interest eat into it. That 21% figure means they're running a tight, profitable shop, not burning money on corporate nonsense.

The catch: In addition to its Japanese home market, FANUC trades over the counter. FANUC's ADR $(FANUY)$ is thinly traded, which means pricing can get weird. But if you want automation exposure without tariff drama, this is your Japanese robot overlord play.

3. Symbotic - The $23 billion Walmart bet: The Walmart partnership calls for 400 micro-fulfillment systems worth more than $5 billion, with an option for 200 more.

But Walmart accounted for more than 80% of Symbotic's sales in its fiscal 2025 third-quarter, which ended in June. (The company's fourth-quarter and fiscal 2025 financial results are slated for Nov. 24 after the market close.)

If Walmart pulls out, Symbotic's dead. If Walmart is successful, every retailer follows. That's not diversification - it's a leveraged bet on Walmart's procurement department.

Symbotic's backlog is $23 billion. The Walmart deal isn't just a customer relationship. It's a reference architecture.

Eleven of 19 analysts rate Symbotic a buy, which tells you everything about Wall Street's comfort with concentration risk when the growth story is this good.

4 Cognex - Every robot needs glasses: Cognex $(CGNX)$ makes machine-vision systems - the cameras that let robots tell dog food from diapers.

Third-quarter revenue was $277 million, up 18%. Adjusted EPS jumped 69%. Operating margin hit 20.9%. Cognex generated $87 million in operating cash flow and returned $37 million to shareholders.

Without Cognex, your warehouse robot is just an expensive forklift that crashes into walls. With Cognex, it's an expensive forklift that works.

Cognex and Japan's Keyence (JP:6861) $(KYCCF)$ control the machine-vision duopoly. Every robot needs to see. That's not a trend. That's physics.

At 60x earnings, Cognex stock is expensive. But it's the mandatory toll booth every automation project passes through. Sure, you could buy Keyence - if you want to navigate Japanese market access, thin ADR liquidity and currency swings. For most U.S. investors, Cognex is the purest and most accessible play on the rise of machine vision.

The math beats the politics

Labor costs don't stay flat. E-commerce doesn't always double. But robots always depreciate on schedule.

The political discourse will continue. Representatives will tweet about displacement. Elon will reply with memes. Think tanks will publish UBI white papers.

None of it changes the math.

Amazon is committing $10 billion through 2027 for 40 robotic fulfillment centers because a gain of 30 cents per package justifies it. Walmart deployed $520 million because 40% lower costs justify it. Target's following because not following means irrelevance, which is worse than bankruptcy. Bankruptcy gets you on CNBC. Irrelevance gets you liquidated in silence.

These aren't pilot projects. They're procurement cycles with signed contracts and delivery schedules. The equipment's shipping. Some of it is already depreciating while generating positive cash flow.

The warehouse-automation market is returning to double-digit growth in 2025. Only 15% of facilities have advanced automation. This spending wave has another decade to run.

The four stocks above represent different entry points. ABB gives you global industrial scale plus AI infrastructure. FANUC gives you quality manufacturing with geographic diversification. Symbotic gives you the warehouse platform every grocer desperately wants. Cognex gives you the vision layer that makes everything work.

The political class will debate job displacement. The equipment suppliers will book revenue. The math doesn't care about politics.

The jobs you never see aren't coming back because they were never economically viable. They existed in PowerPoint slides showing five-year hiring projections that assumed labor costs would stay flat while e-commerce doubled.

Labor costs don't stay flat. E-commerce doesn't always double. But robots always depreciate on schedule.

The question isn't whether automation eliminates jobs. It's whether you want exposure to the companies profiting from elimination, or prefer watching from the sidelines while margins expand and stock prices follow the money.

I know which side I'm on - the same side Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is on. And unlike him, I don't need to buy a yacht.

Charlie Garcia is founder and a managing partner of R360, a peer-to-peer organization for individuals and families with a net worth of $100 million or more. Garcia has no ownership in any of the stocks mentioned.

Agree? Disagree? Share your comments with Charlie Garcia at charlie@R360Global.com. Your letter may be published anonymously in the weekly "Dear Charlie" reader mailbag. By emailing your comments to Charlie Garcia, you agree to have them published on MarketWatch anonymously, or with your first name if you give permission.

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The robots have won. The smart trade now is investing in companies that make them.

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