Ati Robotics offers China-free robots to Western buyers

A recent Federal Communications Commission ban on importing various Chinese-made advanced devices and humanoid robots has sent shockwaves through the robotics industry, but India-based Ati Robotics is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the restriction. Founded in 2017 by Saurabh Chandra, the Bangalore-headquartered startup has spent years developing its own hardware to limit reliance on Chinese components. With several hundred robots currently deployed across more than 50 customers, the company is preparing to launch its first humanoid robot for moving heavy bins later this year, while also planning a new assembly facility in Madison Heights, near Detroit, Michigan.

Ati's product lineup showcases varying degrees of supply chain independence. Its best-selling 10,000-pound tugger is virtually China-free, relying on US-made Ouster lidar sensors and utilizing battery cells as its only Chinese component. The company's pallet mover contains less than 5 percent Chinese parts, though it does use a Chinese solid-state lidar sensor. To avoid Chinese magnets, Ati designs its machines with induction motors; while these are slightly less efficient than Chinese brushless motors, the startup compensates by adding more battery capacity. Even for its upcoming humanoid robot, the arm and actuator are built in Bangalore, though it currently relies on Chinese suppliers for its frameless motor and harmonic drive.

For robotics practitioners and hardware engineers, Ati's strategy proves that building a resilient, non-Chinese supply chain is viable without sacrificing performance. By leveraging Bangalore's electric vehicle ecosystem for two- and three-wheelers, Ati successfully repurposed high-volume, cost-efficient automotive parts for its industrial robots. As geopolitical tensions tighten import rules, developers must shift from optimizing purely for cost to designing for supply chain redundancy. Practitioners can no longer ignore where passive components, gears, or battery cells are sourced, and Ati's model demonstrates that trading minor component efficiencies for geopolitical compliance is a winning engineering trade-off.