Nidec (TSE: 6594): The Motor Giant Building Its Own Reducers
Nidec makes more electric motors than any company on Earth, from tiny hard-drive spindle motors to enormous industrial drives. In robotics, that scale used to mean selling half of a joint — the motor — and letting someone else sell the reducer. Nidec decided it didn't want to stop at half and now builds its own strain-wave reducers to sell complete drive units instead.
Who they are
Nidec was founded in 1973 as Nippon Densan Corporation and renamed simply Nidec in 2023, a rebrand that tracked how far the company had grown beyond its original small-motor niche. It calls itself the world's number one comprehensive motor manufacturer, and the claim is not idle marketing: Nidec motors sit inside hard disk drives, home appliances, automotive systems, industrial machinery, and increasingly robots, spanning a size range from millimetre-scale precision motors to large industrial drives.
2025 and 2026 brought a significant leadership transition. Founder Shigenobu Nagamori, who built Nidec from a small Kyoto motor shop into a global industrial group, voluntarily resigned as Founder and Chairman of the Board in December 2025, moving to the honorary, non-full-time position of Chairman Emeritus. President and CEO Mitsuya Kishida, who had already been representative director alongside Nagamori since 2024, succeeded him as Chairman as well, consolidating Nidec's top executive and governance roles under one person for the first time in the company's history outside founder-led leadership.
That transition matters for how Nidec is read as an investment: Nagamori's aggressive M&A-driven growth style shaped the company for five decades, and Kishida now runs a Nidec entering the humanoid robotics cycle without its founder in the room for the first time.
What they do
Nidec's core robotics-relevant product is the Nidec FLEXWAVE line, a strain wave gear reducer built in-house rather than sourced from a specialist like Harmonic Drive Systems. Combined with the company's existing motor technology, that gives Nidec the ability to sell an integrated rotary actuator — motor and reducer in one housing — directly competing with the "buy a complete joint" trend reshaping Stage 3 of this chain as much as Stage 2.
The company markets FLEXWAVE specifically against humanoid robot requirements: high positional accuracy, zero backlash, low vibration, maximum torque capacity, and lightweight compactness, all necessary for joint positioning and motion cycles that mimic human movement. Beyond humanoids, Nidec's robotics division also serves automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) and arc welding robots, giving it exposure across both the humanoid and traditional industrial robot markets simultaneously.
This dual-capability approach — motors from one heritage business, reducers from a newer internal development effort — is Nidec's answer to a structural question facing this entire stage: does the market end up buying reducers and motors separately from best-of-breed specialists, or does it consolidate around suppliers who can offer the whole joint? Nidec is betting on consolidation, and betting its own balance sheet is large enough to build genuine reducer expertise rather than acquiring it.
How they make money
Nidec is an enormous, diversified company relative to most names in this reducer stage, with consensus full-year revenue estimates in the range of ¥2.6–2.7 trillion and full-year 2026 EPS estimates recently near ¥188–189. That scale means robotics, and FLEXWAVE specifically, is a small piece of a much larger revenue base spanning automotive traction motors, appliance motors, and precision small motors — a structural contrast with pure-play reducer specialists like Harmonic Drive Systems or Leaderdrive, where robotics moves the needle on quarterly results far more directly.
Nidec's revenue and earnings estimates have moved around meaningfully across recent quarters, reflecting broader end-market volatility in automotive and appliance motors rather than anything specific to the robotics push, which underscores that Nidec's near-term financial story is still primarily about its legacy businesses.
Where it sits in the value chain
Nidec sits at the boundary of Stage 2 — Precision reducers and Stage 3 — Actuators, screws & joint modules, deliberately straddling both by combining its own motors with its own reducers into single integrated units. That positions it differently from every other Stage 2 name profiled in this chain, all of which sell the reducer alone and let a separate actuator integrator combine it with a motor.
The comparison worth drawing is with Hyundai Mobis and Schaeffler, both automotive suppliers moving from Stage 3 backward into owning more of the joint's design. Nidec is making the same integration bet from the opposite direction — starting from motors, a business it has dominated for decades, and building reducer capability inward rather than starting from reducers and adding motor integration.
The bigger trend
Nidec's entry into reducers is itself a signal about where this entire value chain is heading: toward integrated joint modules rather than component-by-component procurement. If that consolidation plays out, a company with Nidec's motor scale and now-growing reducer capability is well positioned to be a one-stop supplier for robot builders who would rather buy a finished drive unit than assemble one from three different vendors.
The leadership transition away from founder Nagamori adds a layer of uncertainty that's specific to Nidec rather than to the robotics thesis itself. Nagamori's decades of aggressive, acquisition-driven strategy defined the company's growth playbook; whether Kishida continues that playbook or steers Nidec toward more measured, organic growth — including in robotics — is an open question that will shape how aggressively Nidec pursues the humanoid opportunity relative to its more singularly-focused competitors.
What to watch
- Any disclosed FLEXWAVE design wins or named humanoid customers, given the product's current low visibility relative to its Stage 2 peers.
- Strategic direction under CEO and now-Chairman Mitsuya Kishida following Nagamori's full departure from executive roles.
- Whether Nidec begins breaking out robotics-specific revenue as the segment grows large enough to warrant separate disclosure.
- Competitive response from pure-play reducer makers to Nidec's integrated motor-plus-reducer offering.
- Broader group revenue and margin trends in the core automotive and appliance motor businesses that still dominate results.
Related companies
🇯🇵The strain-wave specialist Nidec's in-house FLEXWAVE line now competes directly against.
🇰🇷Making the same motor-plus-reducer integration bet from the automotive-supplier side.
🇺🇸Magnet supply feeding the motors inside every Nidec drive unit.
FAQ
Does Nidec make reducers or motors?
Both. Nidec is historically the world's largest comprehensive motor manufacturer, and has more recently built in-house strain wave reducer capability under the FLEXWAVE brand, which it combines with its own motors to sell integrated rotary actuators rather than motors and reducers as separate components.
How big is Nidec's robotics business relative to the rest of the company?
Small. Nidec is a diversified motor giant with full-year revenue in the range of ¥2.6–2.7 trillion spanning automotive, appliance, and precision motor businesses. Robotics-specific revenue, including FLEXWAVE reducer sales, is not broken out separately in company disclosures, suggesting it remains a modest contributor to overall results.
Who runs Nidec now that founder Shigenobu Nagamori has stepped down?
Mitsuya Kishida, who had served as President and CEO since 2024, took on the additional role of Chairman of the Board following Nagamori's voluntary resignation in December 2025. Nagamori moved to the honorary, non-executive role of Chairman Emeritus.
Why would a robot builder want an integrated motor-and-reducer unit instead of buying them separately?
Integration reduces the engineering work required to combine a motor and reducer into a working joint, can improve thermal and mechanical performance when designed together from the start, and simplifies the supply chain to a single vendor. This is the same industry-wide shift toward complete joint modules discussed across Stage 3 of this chain.