Yaskawa Electric Chairman Signals Avoidance of Head-On Competition With China; ¥500 Billion to ¥2 Trillion Opportunity in Physical AI

Yaskawa Electric Chairman Hiroshi Ogasawara said “we won’t compete head-on with China” in an interview with Nikkei Business online on September 17, 2026. He also said he sees “a chance to win” in physical AI, a market he estimates at ¥500 billion to ¥2 trillion. The facts confirmed in the excerpt are limited to these remarks and his view of the market’s size.

The Yaskawa Electric chairman’s explicit statement that the company will avoid head-on competition with China indicates that its competitive strategy is not based on price alone. His description of physical AI as a ¥500 billion to ¥2 trillion opportunity offers a clue to the markets where the company may seek to generate revenue.

What is new in this material is that Yaskawa Electric’s top executive has put into words the company’s stance of avoiding head-on competition with China, while positioning physical AI as an opportunity worth ¥500 billion to ¥2 trillion. At the same time, the excerpt names no products, investment amounts, mass-production plans or partners, leaving the strategy at a high level. The remarks therefore indicate “which markets to compete in,” but do not show “what to implement or at what scale.” In Yaskawa Electric expands factory and logistics facility in Slovenia (July 8, 2026), a related article by this newspaper, the company was expanding its manufacturing and logistics facilities in Europe. The latest remarks do not contradict that kind of supply-chain development; they could instead be read as a shift in the basis of competition away from price competition with China and toward supply networks, including in Europe, and areas of physical AI application. However, the excerpt alone does not establish which business, if any, links the factory expansion to these remarks. For the industry, the focus appears to be shifting from competition over the number of robots sold to how the physical AI market is defined. If the company is not going head-to-head with Chinese rivals on price, differentiation could center on combining control, software, peripheral systems and on-site applications, but the excerpt offers no specifics. The next question is how Yaskawa Electric will translate these remarks into its product lines, target industries, regional strategy and investment plans.

For Japanese robotics companies, the question is whether they can differentiate themselves through physical AI applications and supply networks rather than price competition with Chinese rivals. The excerpt, however, does not detail Yaskawa Electric’s investment or component strategy.