I. Strategic Emerging Market: The Next Growth Pole for Bearings

The global bearing industry is at the threshold of a new round of technological revolution. In 2025, the revenue of the Chinese bearing industry reached 246.8 billion yuan, and the output exceeded 25.6 billion sets, both reaching new historical highs. However, the growth in traditional general fields has become stable, and the real burst force comes from the strategic emerging market.

 

Humanoid robots, low-altitude economy, semiconductor equipment, data centers - these high-growth sectors are constantly raising the requirements for bearings: higher load-bearing capacity, higher rotational speed, higher precision, wider temperature range. Bearings that can simultaneously meet extreme temperature adaptability, multi-environment collaborative stability and high precision are becoming the most competitive entities.

 

NMT, a Japanese company specializing in bearings for nearly a century, has achieved fourfold breakthroughs in materials purification, process refinement, scenario customization and intelligent upgrading, upgrading precision bearings into core solutions for strategic emerging market transmission pain points.

 

II. Humanoid Robots: A Leap from 62 Million US Dollars to 870 Million US Dollars

Humanoid robots are currently the most explosive growth point in the bearing industry. In 2025, the global market sales of humanoid robot bearings were approximately 33.08 million US dollars, and it is expected to reach 870 million US dollars in 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of 46.6%. Taking Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus as an example, if the shipment volume reaches 1 million units, the new demand for bearings is expected to exceed 3 billion yuan. The wrist joints, elbow joints, knee joints, ankle joints, hip joints, and dexterous hands of humanoid robots all have potential for bearing applications, and the potential value of a single machine is expected to reach 5200 yuan.

 

Humanoid robots have extremely strict requirements for bearings. High-precision transmission in compact spaces, temperature cycles caused by frequent start-stop, the contradiction between lightweight and high load-bearing capacity - each challenge is testing the comprehensive performance of bearings. Harmonic reducers usually use 1 cross-roller bearing and 1 flexible bearing; the fixed side of the screw rod usually uses angular contact ball bearings, and the supporting side usually uses deep groove ball bearings.

 

NMT and cross-roller bearings are precisely designed for these scenarios. The cross-sectional thin-walled bearings have a section size that does not change with the increase in installation diameter, and designers can make the joints thinner, lighter, and larger hollow without sacrificing rigidity. Cross-roller bearings use a cross-orthogonal arrangement of cylindrical rollers to simultaneously bear radial load, axial load and overturning moment within a very small section height. NMT's cross-roller bearings introduce a positioning pre-tightening structure in the outer ring to use the height difference between the end faces of the inner and outer rings to form a calculable elastic compression amount, ensuring consistent assembly pre-compression effect. In the robot industry, most joint accuracy losses are not due to the wear of gears or motors, but start from the invisible clearance expansion in the bearing - NMT has seized this pain point.

 

III. Low-altitude Economy: Bearings Essential for the Trillion-Dollar Market

Low-altitude economy is one of the most watched emerging markets since 2025. The overall scale of China's low-altitude economy is expected to exceed 1.5 trillion yuan, driving the entry of high-end components for aviation into the golden window period of domestic substitution. There are over 1.12 million registered industrial drones in China, and nearly 20 eVTOL leading enterprises are accelerating mass production. The annual compound growth rate of the aviation self-lubricating bearing supporting market is expected to reach 37% in the next three years.

 

Wanxiang Qianchao has completed the sample delivery of multiple types of bearings for the transmission system of a certain leading low-altitude heavy-load manned/unmanned helicopter. The product types are mainly deep groove ball bearings and cylindrical roller bearings. Luozheng Group has developed engine bearings for the world's largest cargo drone "Changying-8" and successfully entered the core supply chain of flying cars.

 

The core challenges faced by low-altitude aircraft are: the temperature difference crossing from ground high temperature to high-altitude low temperature, high vibration and variable loads, and the contradiction between lightweight and high reliability. Traditional lubricated bearings for oils require maintenance every 50-80 flight hours, and they are prone to failure in extreme conditions such as -60℃ cold environments and coastal salt fog. The NMT wide-temperature lubrication system maintains stable lubrication performance between ground high temperatures and high-altitude low temperatures; specially heat-stabilized treated steel ensures the bearings maintain dimensional stability across the wide temperature range; lightweight design and high-purity materials balance weight reduction and reliability. NMT deep groove ball bearings and angular contact ball bearings can meet the strict requirements of low-altitude aircraft transmission systems.

 

IV. Semiconductor Equipment: Pollution-Free Precision Transmission in a Vacuum Environment

Semiconductor equipment is one of the most technically demanding segments in the bearing industry. As integrated circuit manufacturers strive to make chips faster, smaller, and cheaper, semiconductor manufacturing equipment companies increasingly rely on advanced ceramic components to achieve the required performance. The global sales of precision ceramic bearings for balls in 2025 are approximately 309 million US dollars, and it is expected to reach 635 million US dollars by 2032.

 

Dry vacuum pump bearings are key components in semiconductor manufacturing, used to create vacuum environments in processes such as lithography, etching, thin film deposition, and electrode formation. On general semiconductor production lines, up to thousands of dry vacuum pumps are typically used, and each pump is usually equipped with 4 dry vacuum pump bearings. To meet the requirements for long-term stable operation in low-noise, low-vibration, and harsh vacuum lubrication environments, industry leaders have begun to adopt ceramic ball technology.

 

NMT's technology adaptation for semiconductor equipment scenarios: A combination of high-purity stainless steel and ceramic materials ensures extremely low gas leakage rates and does not contaminate wafers; solid lubrication or low-volatile lubrication solutions eliminate the risk of oil evaporation; ultra-precision processing and micro-gap design ensure reliable transmission under nanometer-level positioning accuracy. Fully ceramic bearings can adapt to many challenging conditions in semiconductor production stages. NMT cross-roller bearings, angular contact bearings, thin-walled bearings, etc., can also be applied in the semiconductor equipment field.

 

V. Data Centers: The "Cooling Power" Behind AI Computing Capacity

The explosive growth of AI models is pushing data centers to unprecedented levels of heat dissipation pressure. As the power density of a single cabinet exceeds 30kW, traditional air-cooling solutions have reached the thermal dissipation ceiling.

 

Magnetic suspension bearing technology is becoming the core solution for data center cooling. Magnetic suspension compressors use magnetic suspension bearings to avoid mechanical friction losses caused by direct contact, and compared to screw units, the comprehensive part-load performance coefficient is improved by approximately 42%, motor power consumption is reduced by 30%, and it can help data centers achieve a PUE of 1.2. Yidianteng integrates magnetic suspension bearings with fluorine pump systems to provide efficient cooling solutions for different-sized AI computing centers. The magnetic suspension centrifugal compressor of Yinghete adopts active control magnetic suspension bearing technology to achieve rotor non-contact suspension and full oil-free design.

 

Magnetic suspension bearings have revolutionary advantages of no contact, zero friction, and no lubrication, and are particularly suitable for high-speed, vacuum, and ultra-clean environments. NMT's technical accumulation in the field of precision bearings has laid a solid foundation for expanding into more cutting-edge directions such as magnetic suspension bearings. The wide-temperature domain lubrication system and full-spectrum sealing solution cover a wide range of temperature intervals from conventional industries to extreme environments.

 

VI. Materials and Processes: NMT's Strategic Emerging Technology Base

NMT bearings can cover the aforementioned diverse strategic emerging technology tracks due to the underlying universality of its technology system.

 

High-purity steel is the cornerstone of performance. NMT uses vacuum degassing high-carbon chromium bearing steel, through precise forging and secondary quenching processes, to reduce the content of non-metallic inclusions in the material to an extremely low level, with an anti-fatigue limit that is 38% higher than that of ordinary products. After undergoing special heat treatment, the surface hardness of the bearings reaches HRC62-64, with the anti-wear performance enhanced by 40%. Meanwhile, the core part's toughness ensures that it won't fracture under high-frequency impact loads. The rated lifespan is more than twice that of industry standards.

 

Ultra-precision manufacturing converts material advantages into actual performance. After nanometer-level ultra-finishing of the raceways, the surface roughness is controlled within 0.01 μm, and the rotational accuracy reaches the high standard of ISO P2. The retainers are optimized through dynamic characteristic simulation, with the friction coefficient reduced to 0.0015, and the operating noise controlled within 20 dB.

 

Sealing and lubrication for all scenarios are adapted to different track requirements. NMT offers a full range of solutions including IP54-level basic dust protection, IP68-level high-pressure waterproofing, and fluorine rubber seals. The long-term low-volatile lubricating grease has a volatile amount of ≤ 0.003 mg/g, and can achieve the longest maintenance cycle of 30,000 hours within a wide temperature range of -45°C to 155°C.

 

Seven, Customized Services: Precisely Matching for Each Emerging Scenario

NMT supports temperature-adaptive substrate material selection, thermal-stable structure optimization, wide-temperature-domain lubrication customization, and special-structure non-standard customization. From standard specifications to non-standard customization, from material selection to structure optimization, NMT provides precise-matched products and services for each strategic emerging track. Mainstream specifications have ready-made inventory, installation dimensions follow industry standards, and can be directly replaced with imported similar products. The professional technical team provides selection and technical support.

 

Eight, Value Summary

The 46.6% compound annual growth rate of humanoid robots, the trillion-dollar market of low-altitude economy, the nanometer-level precision requirements of semiconductor equipment, and the wide-temperature-domain operation of data centers - every strategic emerging track is creating new growth space and technical thresholds for bearings. The selection of bearings has already gone beyond the simple supporting function and has become the underlying variable defining the overall machine performance.

 

NMT's Japanese Enmu Tai Precision Bearings integrate material purification, precision manufacturing, and scenario adaptation, providing reliable precision transmission solutions for humanoid robots, low-altitude economy, semiconductor equipment, data centers, and other strategic emerging tracks. Make every rotation more precise, quieter, and more durable - whether in robot joints or in the rotors of unmanned aerial vehicles at 10,000 meters; whether in the etching chambers under vacuum or in the cooling systems of AI data centers.