The Growth of Intelligent Welding Robots Does Not Create a New Category Apart from the Existing Market

According to GGII data, China's welding robot sales reached 59,500 units in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 13.33%, of which arc welding robots accounted for 41,600 units, up 18.52% year-on-year. In 2026, total welding robot sales are projected to reach 67,900 units, with arc welding robots expected to contribute approximately 47,500 units.

On top of this solid foundation, intelligence is gradually reshaping the product structure of welding robots. In terms of hardware form factors, the current intelligent welding robot landscape remains dominated by two categories: traditional industrial robots and collaborative robots (cobots). However, the market demands for these two technology paths are increasingly diverging.

Traditional industrial robots continue to be the preferred choice for continuous operations, large structural components, and applications requiring high trajectory stability. In recent years, robot manufacturers have begun developing welding-dedicated solutions, optimizing everything from mechanical structure and control systems to welding power sources.

On the other hand, collaborative robots are rapidly gaining traction in the welding market. Industries such as steel structure fabrication, hardware manufacturing, and construction machinery are characterized by high-mix, low-volume orders, where production floors frequently face challenges such as frequent workpiece changeovers, dispersed workstations, and high costs of retrofitting fixed production lines. These challenges align well with the strengths of cobots — flexible deployment, easy mobility, and a relatively low barrier to entry.

Clearly, the divergence between industrial robots and cobots is only superficial. At its core, both camps are competing for the same objective: the ability to compress the uncertainties inherent in complex welding environments into a standardized, deployable, and replicable system capability.

Steel Structure and Shipbuilding Take the Lead in Scaling Up

In the current market, steel structure fabrication and shipbuilding remain the two most significant growth drivers for intelligent welding robots. The reasons are straightforward: both sectors involve enormous welding volumes, along with a high prevalence of non-standard workpieces, complex geometries, and heavy reliance on manual labor. The application boundaries of traditional fixed automation and teach-mode robots are thus clearly defined.

In 2025, China's steel structure output reached 107 million tons, with an estimated industry-wide demand for approximately 350,000 welders. A large number of steel structure enterprises operate under a "small-batch, high-mix, non-standard" order model. Whenever workpiece specifications change, traditional robots require reprogramming through teach-in, and the efficiency of automated equipment is often eroded by changeover and debugging time.

Compared to steel structures, the demand for intelligent welding in shipbuilding is equally pressing. In 2025, China's shipbuilding completion reached 53.69 million deadweight tons (dwt), with new orders at 107.82 million dwt and orders on hand at 274.42 million dwt, maintaining the country's global leadership across all three key indicators. Entering 2026, industry sentiment has further strengthened. At the same time, constraints such as dock availability, shoreline resources, environmental regulations, and labor supply mean that shipyards cannot solely rely on new capacity additions to absorb orders. Improving the utilization rate of existing capacity has therefore become a more pragmatic path forward. Welding, as one of the most critical production processes, accounts for approximately 30% to 40% of total shipbuilding man-hours.

Beyond steel structures and shipbuilding, intelligent welding is also steadily penetrating sectors such as construction machinery, energy, power equipment, automotive components, rail transit, and metal fabrication. What the industry is truly awaiting is the transition of more application scenarios from project validation to volume replication.

Market Size Heading Toward RMB 6 Billion

Over the past few years, the intelligent welding robotics industry has primarily focused on solving the fundamental technical question: "Can robots handle non-standard welding tasks?" The next-phase challenge is shifting to a different question: "Can we deploy them at scale?"

This shift means that the criteria for evaluating intelligent welding solutions are moving beyond individual equipment specifications toward more tangible production metrics: How quickly can a new workpiece be brought into production? How many personnel are required for changeover? How many units can a single operator manage? Can weld quality remain consistent over the long term? And how soon can the equipment investment be recouped?

According to GGII, the intelligent welding robot market is evolving from general-purpose workstations toward industry-specific solutions, progressing along a trajectory of "standalone equipment → standardized workstations → flexible production lines."

The market's expansion from RMB 1.38 billion to RMB 6 billion has charted a relatively clear direction. However, the companies that ultimately capture the dividends of this growth cycle are likely not those that excel in a single technology dimension, but rather those that can truly integrate robot hardware, perception systems, welding processes, software platforms, and on-site delivery capabilities into standardized product offerings — and replicate these solutions across an ever-growing number of manufacturing facilities.

The next five years will mark a critical phase in which intelligent welding robots transition from technical validation to large-scale commercial deployment.

GGII forecasts that by 2030, global sales of intelligent welding robots are expected to exceed 50,000 units, with a total market size surpassing RMB 10 billion. China alone is projected to account for 37,500 units, representing a CAGR of over 40%, with the domestic market size reaching approximately RMB 6 billion at a CAGR exceeding 30%.