HLabs Is Building the Parts Catalog That American Robotics Companies Desperately Need

The Macro: Robotics Has a Supply Chain Problem

Everyone talks about the robotics revolution. Humanoids from Figure and 1X. Warehouse bots from companies like Remy AI and Agility Robotics. Surgical systems, agricultural drones, inspection crawlers. The hardware side of AI is exploding.

But here is the dirty secret that nobody in robotics venture capital presentations mentions: building a robot in the United States is a procurement nightmare. The actuators come from Japan. The motor controllers come from China. The sensors come from wherever you can find them. And half the time, the components you need do not exist in a form factor that works for your design, so you end up machining custom parts in-house.

This means every robotics startup is spending 6 to 12 months building the same basic subsystems before they can even start working on their actual product. It is like asking every software company to write their own operating system before building an app.

HLabs, based in Austin, Texas and backed by Y Combinator, wants to fix this by manufacturing a standardized set of robotic components domestically. Actuators, electronics, and plug-and-play primitives that let robotics teams skip the supply chain headache and go straight to building their product.

The Micro: Domestic Manufacturing for a Domestic Industry

Paul Hetherington is a second-time YC founder who ran Mystic (W21) as CEO for six years before starting HLabs. That operational experience matters when you are building a hardware manufacturing business, which is fundamentally different from software.

The product concept is straightforward but hard to execute. HLabs produces a set of robotic building blocks, actuators, motor controllers, and electronic subsystems, designed to work together out of the box. The idea is that a robotics team can order components from HLabs and have a moving platform within weeks instead of months.

The “made in USA” angle is more than patriotic branding. Defense and government robotics contracts increasingly require domestic supply chains. ITAR regulations restrict which foreign components can go into military systems. And the tariff situation with Chinese electronics makes offshore sourcing more expensive and less predictable every year.

Competitors in this space include Maxon (Swiss), Harmonic Drive (Japanese), and various Chinese actuator manufacturers. The domestic alternatives are limited, which is exactly the gap HLabs is targeting.

The challenge for HLabs is the classic hardware startup problem: manufacturing at scale requires capital, and robotics components demand tight tolerances and quality control. Building actuators is not like assembling circuit boards. The mechanical precision required is significant, and the testing overhead is real.

But if HLabs can deliver reliable, standardized components at reasonable prices, the addressable market is enormous. Every robotics startup in the country is a potential customer, and the defense industrial base is actively looking for domestic suppliers.

The Verdict

HLabs is solving a genuine bottleneck in American robotics. The question is whether they can manufacture at quality and scale fast enough to capture the market before the demand curve leaves them behind.

At 30 days: how many robotics teams are using HLabs components in active prototypes? Early adoption from real robotics companies is the strongest signal.

At 60 days: what is the defect rate and return rate on shipped components? Hardware quality at this precision level makes or breaks the business.

At 90 days: has any defense contractor or government program started evaluating HLabs as a domestic supplier? That is where the large-volume, high-margin contracts live.

I am bullish on the thesis. The US robotics industry needs a domestic components supplier. Whether HLabs is the team to build it at the necessary quality and scale is the open question. Paul’s track record as an operator gives me confidence, but hardware manufacturing is unforgiving.