Forge Robotics

European manufacturing is built on the shoulders of SMEs: thousands of production companies with 50, 100, or 500 employees manufacturing components, assemblies, and semi-finished products for larger industries or end markets. These companies need automation to remain competitive, but face a robotics market that was not designed for them: traditional industrial robots are expensive, rigid, require specialist integration, and do not adapt well to the frequent product changes typical of small-batch production. Forge Robotics, a European startup founded in Paris, builds an answer to this gap. The company produces adaptive and modular robotic systems specifically designed for SME manufacturers. Modularity is at the heart of the proposition: robotic components can be reconfigured for different applications without requiring new machines or complex integrations, making the system suitable for production lines that change frequently. The adaptive characteristic — the ability to learn from data and adjust to process variations — reduces the initial programming requirement and increases operational flexibility. Positioning for SMEs is a deliberate choice that creates both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity is a numerically enormous market historically underserved by major robotics players, who prefer to focus on contracts with automotive and large appliance manufacturers. The challenge is that SMEs have limited budgets and simpler procurement processes — requiring accessible pricing and a commercial model that reduces perceived buyer risk. The likely business model is a combination of hardware sales with software support and possible leasing or robot-as-a-service options, following a trend already adopted by other players in the sector. Forge Robotics enters a segment where the convergence of falling hardware costs, AI for computer vision, and competitive pressure on European SMEs creates conditions for rapidly growing demand for accessible automation.