Remember when “going dark” meant your phone died or Netflix crashed? Well, welcome to 2025, where entire factories are going dark on purpose – and it’s not because they forgot to pay the electric bill.
Meet the “dark factory” – manufacturing plants that literally operate in complete darkness because, plot twist, they don’t need humans anymore. No coffee breaks, no bathroom runs, no Karen from HR complaining about the thermostat. Just robots doing robot things in the dark like some kind of industrial rave.
Take Xiaomi’s Beijing facility – this place cranks out one smartphone every second in total darkness. That’s faster than most people can unlock their current phone. Meanwhile, Amazon’s newest warehouses are basically giant robot playgrounds where packages zoom around without a human hand touching them.
But here’s where it gets real: Last month, U.S. manufacturing shed 18,000 jobs. That’s not a typo – eighteen thousand people got the “thanks, but the robots got this” treatment. Amazon alone has already replaced 14,000 human roles with their metal coworkers, with plans to bump that to 30,000 after the holidays. Nothing says “Happy New Year” like a pink slip from a robot.
The math is brutal but simple. Ford’s Highland Park plant in 1908 employed 70,000 people. Meta’s upcoming Louisiana data center – twice the size – will employ just 500. That’s not efficiency; that’s an extinction event for traditional manufacturing jobs.
IBM paused hiring because “AI can do it.” Microsoft axed 15,000 jobs this year. UPS showed 48,000 workers the door. Even Target – yes, the place where you go for toilet paper and somehow spend $200 – announced its first major layoffs in a decade.
The World Economic Forum (those fun folks who meet in Swiss ski resorts to discuss our futures) predicts 14 million jobs will vanish by 2027. Goldman Sachs? They’re betting on 300 million globally by 2030. Suddenly, your job security feels about as stable as crypto prices.
But here’s the kicker – the same companies promising to bring manufacturing back to America are the ones leading these layoffs. They’re not bringing jobs back; they’re bringing robots back. It’s like inviting your ex to your wedding and expecting them to be happy for you.
So what’s an investor to do? Simple: if you can’t beat the robots, invest in them. The smart money is flowing into companies that enable warehouse automation. Think of it as the “picks and shovels” play of the robot revolution.
One company in particular has Walmart, Target, and other major retailers as customers, helping them automate their supply chains. Walmart just signed a multimillion-dollar deal for 400 automated fulfillment centers. That’s a lot of robots, and someone’s got to build them.
The bottom line? The future of manufacturing is dark, automated, and probably more profitable than ever – just don’t expect it to employ many humans. Time to either learn to code or learn to invest in the companies replacing us all.