Doosan Robotics (KOSPI: 454910): Cobots Today, an NVIDIA-Backed Humanoid by 2028

Who they are

Doosan Robotics makes collaborative robots (cobots) — industrial arms designed to work safely alongside people without a safety cage — and is the only Korean robotics company listed on the KOSPI main board, distinguishing it from smaller names like Rainbow Robotics and Robotis listed on the KOSDAQ. Its lineup expanded from four models in 2015 to ten by 2020, giving it the largest cobot model range in the market by that measure, and it reached global top-4 ranking by unit sales in 2021.

In September 2025, Doosan Robotics acquired ONExia, a U.S. automation and robotics solutions company, to accelerate its push into the North American market — a deliberate move to sell complete automated systems rather than standalone robot arms, since customers generally need a full material-handling or assembly line, not just a robotic joint, and Doosan's own strategic framing describes evolving from "hardware business" toward "solution provider" as central to its investment thesis.

What they do

Doosan's cobot and automation solutions business serves global machining solution providers and robot solution companies, primarily in the United States and Europe. The company's most significant 2026 strategic announcement is its NVIDIA partnership: leveraging its established cobot manufacturing base, Doosan plans to co-develop an intelligent solution called Agentic Robot OS by 2027, followed by sequential launches of industrial humanoid models beginning in 2028.

That sequencing — cobot revenue and manufacturing scale first, software platform second, humanoid hardware third — is a distinctly staged approach relative to some peers that announce humanoid hardware ambitions immediately. It reflects a company using its existing, revenue-generating cobot business to fund and de-risk a longer-horizon humanoid bet, rather than launching a humanoid program as its primary initial product.

How they make money

Doosan's 2026 revenue growth has been dramatic in percentage terms off a small base: Q1 2026 revenue was KRW 15.30 billion, up 189.7% year over year, and Q2 2026 revenue reached KRW 17.67 billion, up 290.0% year over year — more than tripling. H1 2026 cumulative revenue was KRW 32.97 billion, up 236.0% from KRW 9.81 billion in the same period a year earlier.

2025 full-year figures showed the other side of the growth story: revenue actually declined 29.58% year over year to KRW 329.78 billion (a figure that appears inconsistent with the much smaller quarterly 2026 figures cited above and may reflect different revenue recognition scope; investors should verify against primary disclosures), while operating loss widened to KRW 594.72 billion from KRW 412.02 billion — a reminder that Doosan's transition from a hardware seller toward a solutions provider, including the ONExia acquisition, has come with real near-term cost.

Where it sits in the value chain

Doosan sits in Stage 7 — Robot builders, occupying the "mature cobot business funding a future humanoid bet" position discussed at the chain level — a genuine industrial arm manufacturer with real revenue, as distinct from a pre-revenue humanoid prototype company. Its foreign investor buying interest has been notable: in one recent month, Doosan Robotics was the single most-bought KOSPI stock by foreign investors, ahead of far larger semiconductor names.

The NVIDIA partnership also connects Doosan to Stage 5 of this chain (compute and foundation models), since the Agentic Robot OS effort depends directly on NVIDIA's broader robotics AI stack — making Doosan one of several robot builders in this chain, alongside Boston Dynamics with Google DeepMind, pursuing a foundation-model partnership rather than building AI capability entirely in-house.

The bigger trend

Doosan's story captures a specific, credible variant of the humanoid opportunity: rather than a pre-revenue startup betting everything on a single humanoid product, it is an established cobot manufacturer with real, rapidly growing revenue using that base to fund a staged, multi-year path toward humanoid hardware, backed by a major technology partner in NVIDIA. Korean brokerage estimates project the humanoid market growing at a 77% compound annual rate through 2035, from roughly $4 billion in 2026 to $663 billion by 2035 — a scale of projected growth that explains why foreign investors have been buying this specific stock aggressively even amid ongoing operating losses.

The unresolved question is standard across this stage of the chain: whether a 290% revenue growth rate on a still-small base, combined with a multi-year humanoid roadmap, converts into sustainable profitability before the cash balance built up from prior capital raises runs down meaningfully. Doosan's zero-net-debt position buys real time to answer that question, more so than several peers.

Related companies

Also in this stage but not yet profiled: SPG (KOSDAQ: 058610).

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