Which Region Dominates the U.S. Warehouse Robotics Market? The South Leads

Walmart’s USD 1.3 Billion Georgia Build and Amazon’s North Carolina Launch Pull Warehouse Automation Capital South, While the Midwest Adds Scale and the West Shows Fewer New Commitments

On August 27, 2026, the Georgia Department of Economic Development announced that Walmart will build a 1.5-million-square-foot, highly automated fulfillment center in Carnesville, Georgia, a USD 1.3 billion investment that the state says will create 1,000 jobs, with construction scheduled to begin in late 2026. Five weeks later, on October 5, 2026, WilmingtonBiz reported that Amazon had formally launched what it described as North Carolina’s largest and most advanced robotics fulfillment center, a site that began ramping up in August. Two of the country’s largest retailers have committed capital to robotics-led buildings within weeks of each other, and both sit in the South, which sharpens a question the warehouse automation industry has avoided answering with data: which U.S. region is actually leading?

According to Next Move Strategy Consulting’s U.S. Warehouse Robotics Market report, the U.S. warehouse robotics market was valued at USD 1.45 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 9.44 billion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 17.59% from 2026 to 2035. NextMSC primary research and analysis places 2026 market size at USD 2.20 billion and unit volume rising from 94 thousand units in 2025 to 668 thousand units by 2035, a CAGR of 18.50% over the 2026 to 2035 period. The report analyzes the United States as one national market and does not publish a sub-national revenue split, so this article tests regional leadership against named, dated external disclosures rather than against any NMSC regional share.

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On NMSC’s published figures, 2035 revenue is 6.5 times the 2025 base (NextMSC calculation from the report’s USD 1.45 billion and USD 9.44 billion values), a trajectory in which the location of each new facility matters more than the national total, because large automated buildings are procured once and operated for a decade or longer.

The Short Answer: The South Leads on Committed Capital, Not on Measured Revenue

On the disclosures reviewed for this article, the South holds the strongest claim to leadership in new robotics-led capacity, measured by the size and automation intensity of facilities announced or opened in 2026. The Midwest follows with a recently opened goods-to-person site, the West shows fewer new commitments in the sources reviewed, and the Northeast’s disclosed activity does not state its automation scope. That is a ranking of capital being committed, not of robots installed or revenue booked: no federal agency or NMSC publication currently breaks warehouse robot installations out by region, and a reader should treat any claim of precise regional shares in this market with caution.

The Backdrop: Labor Economics Meet Capital Budgets

The International Federation of Robotics reported in its World Robotics 2026 press release of September 24, 2026 that the United States installed 38,400 industrial robots in 2025, a 12% year-on-year increase that put the country ahead of Japan’s 36,200 installations and into second place worldwide behind China. The figure covers industrial robots across all sectors, led by automotive at 13,500 installations, so it frames national momentum rather than warehouse deployment specifically.

Warehouse labor data point in the same direction without proving causation. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Industries at a Glance page for Warehousing and Storage, extracted on October 20, 2026, shows seasonally adjusted employment slipping from 1,845.8 thousand in June 2026 to a preliminary 1,831.8 thousand in September 2026, a decline of 14,000 jobs or 0.8% (NextMSC calculation from BLS figures). BLS does not attribute that movement to automation. Supply Chain Dive reported in 2026 on a 2025 study by MHI, Peerless Research Group and The Robotics Group finding that 48% of participating organizations were using robots in their plants or warehouses in 2025, up from 23% three years earlier.

The spending side is explicit at the largest buyer. Walmart’s supply chain capital outlays are scheduled to crest within the same window as the Georgia build, and its chief executive told investors as much on the company’s fourth-quarter call.

“probably peak this year and next year”

- John Furner, President and Chief Executive Officer, Walmart, Walmart fourth-quarter earnings call, as reported by Supply Chain Dive in “Walmart: Supply chain spending set to ‘peak’ next 2 years, CEO says”, February 2026.

Key Industry Developments: Where the Capital Is Landing

The Georgia project is the largest single disclosure. Walmart’s Carnesville center, about 85 miles northeast of Atlanta, is a USD 1.3 billion commitment that Supply Chain Dive reported on after the August 27, 2026 state announcement, and it belongs to a network that Walmart has built around same-day and next-day shipping. In North Carolina, WilmingtonBiz reported on October 5, 2026 that Amazon’s Wilmington center is one of its next-generation sites; Amazon’s news release, as quoted by WilmingtonBiz, credits the design with up to 25% faster fulfillment processing than earlier facility designs and 30% more skilled technical roles in reliability, maintenance and engineering.

Texas adds a third Southern data point at smaller scale. Supply Chain Dive reported on July 13, 2026 that a Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filing dated July 6 shows Amazon planning a 248,687-square-foot sorting warehouse in Georgetown, Texas, a USD 48 million project due for completion by July 2027, in which robotic systems bring items to employees for order preparation. Outside the South, Shein’s 737,000-square-foot automated distribution warehouse in Lebanon, Indiana, announced in a September 10, 2026 press release and reported by Supply Chain Dive on September 14, 2026, uses a goods-to-person fulfillment system and sits beside the retailer’s existing Whitestown operations, giving Central Indiana more than 2.5 million square feet of Shein space.

Disclosed 2026 Warehouse Automation Commitments by U.S. Region

The table is a record of what was disclosed, and the regional spread is uneven for a reason the sources do not resolve: companies announce greenfield builds with press releases, while retrofits inside existing buildings often pass without one. Walmart’s plan to retrofit 23 of its 42 regional distribution centers with automation, noted by Supply Chain Dive in its August 2026 coverage of the Georgia project, is exactly that kind of quieter activity, and its locations are not itemized here.

Competitive Dynamics: Integrators Consolidate as Sites Multiply

The vendor side is reorganizing around the same build cycle. Robotics 24/7 reported on October 12, 2026 that Toyota Automated Logistics now combines Bastian Solutions, Vanderlande’s warehousing business and viastore under one umbrella, and Symbotic announced in October 2026 that it is acquiring Germany’s cellumation to add modular sortation technology. Bastian Solutions and Symbotic are both profiled among the 15 key players in the NMSC report, which also records Symbotic’s January 2025 acquisition of Walmart’s Advanced Systems & Robotics business and the related agreement to expand warehouse automation across Walmart’s network.

Growth Drivers and Restraints

U.S. Warehouse Robotics Market — Growth Catalyst & Risk Assessment Matrix

NMSC Strategic Perspective: Build Cycles, Not Installed Base, Will Decide Regional Leadership

NextMSC primary research and analysis reads the 2026 disclosures as evidence that leadership in this market is being decided at the moment of site selection. A greenfield building in Georgia or North Carolina can be designed around robotics from the slab upward, whereas a retrofit inside an older distribution center must route autonomous equipment around existing racking, conveyors and legacy control systems. The NMSC report assigns a −1.3% impact on the CAGR forecast to deployment cost and integration complexity, and that restraint weighs most heavily on retrofits and on smaller operators, which helps explain why the largest disclosed commitments cluster in new buildings in the South.

The same lens explains what the South’s lead does not mean. It does not mean the region holds the most installed robots, a measure no public source supplies, and it does not mean the Midwest or West is falling behind in operational automation. NextMSC’s reading is that the South currently leads on the pipeline of capacity that will be commissioned over the next several years, while regions with older distribution networks are more likely to modernize through the phased retrofit programs that Walmart has described and that rarely carry a headline figure.

Three developments would change this view: a federal or industry body publishing installation counts by state, Walmart or Amazon disclosing retrofit locations, or a cluster of large automated builds being announced in the Midwest or West. For system integrators and robot vendors, the practical implication is to staff commissioning, maintenance and software support where the 2026 to 2027 openings are concentrated, since NMSC’s forecast of volume growing from 94 thousand to 668 thousand units depends on those sites performing as designed.

Bottom Line

The title question has a defensible answer with a clear limit: the South leads on committed capital in the U.S. warehouse robotics market. Walmart’s USD 1.3 billion automated fulfillment center in Carnesville, Georgia, Amazon’s robotics fulfillment center in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Amazon’s USD 48 million robotic sorting warehouse in Georgetown, Texas, together outweigh the Midwest’s Shein site in Lebanon, Indiana, and the thinner record in the West and Northeast. No public dataset measures installed warehouse robots by region, so this is a ranking of announced and opened capacity rather than of revenue. According to NextMSC primary research and analysis, the U.S. market will grow from USD 1.45 billion in 2025 to USD 9.44 billion by 2035 at a 17.59% CAGR, with deployment cost and integration complexity the main brake. Vendors should follow the 2026 to 2027 commissioning pipeline, while investors should watch whether retrofit programs in older hubs close the gap.

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