ABB Publishes 2025 Report Showing Sustained Growth
Industrial automation firm ABB has published its Annual Reporting Suite for 2025, detailing steady growth across its robotics, electrification, and process automation divisions. The report comes as legacy automation vendors face increasing competitive pressure from AI-native startups and new business models like robots-as-a-service (RaaS).
- For the full year 2025, ABB reported its strongest performance on record, with revenues of $33.2 billion and a record operational EBITA margin of 19%. The fourth quarter was the first in company history to exceed $10 billion in orders. - The Robotics division specifically generated $2.3 billion in revenue in 2025. However, the broader Robotics & Discrete Automation business area experienced challenges, including a 14% revenue drop in the first quarter of 2025 and a market slowdown in discrete automation later in the year. - ABB plans to separate its robotics division; reports indicate a potential spin-off as a publicly listed company or a sale to SoftBank, expected to be completed in 2026. The division has been reported as a "discontinued operation" since the fourth quarter of 2025. - To bolster its AI capabilities, ABB recently acquired Sevensense, a provider of AI-enabled 3D vision navigation technology for autonomous mobile robots, and a majority stake in Meshmind, a software firm specializing in AI and the Industrial Internet of Things. - The company is actively collaborating with AI startups, launching a "Robotics AI Startup Challenge" to foster innovation in areas like natural language programming and autonomous decision-making. It also invested in LandingAI to integrate its vision AI platform, aiming to cut robot vision AI training and deployment time by up to 80%. - Morten Wierod, a company veteran who previously led the Electrification and Motion business areas, took over as CEO in August 2024. This leadership change followed a period of significant portfolio restructuring and improved financial performance under his predecessor, Björn Rosengren.
