Robotics

Midea's origin story is a Chinese manufacturing legend: in 1968, founder He Xiangjian and 22 neighbors started a workshop in Shunde, Guangdong, making plastic bottle caps. Five decades later that workshop is the world's largest home appliance maker by revenue — and, through its majority stake in German robot maker KUKA, a major player in industrial automation. The company's appliance empire spans air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums under the Midea brand and the acquired Toshiba home appliance brand. Its scale is staggering: annual revenue near ¥373 billion (US$52 billion), roughly 190,000 employees, and factories on every continent — including a new appliance plant in Egypt and expanding production in Vietnam and Thailand to serve global markets. Midea's industrial arm is the differentiator most consumers never see: through KUKA it sells industrial robots and automation systems to factories worldwide, and its own plants are among the most automated appliance factories on earth. For B2B buyers, Midea offers something rare — an appliance giant that is simultaneously a robotics and automation supplier.