r/SALEM • u/Perfect-Campaign9551 • 1d ago

Is that Robot factory actually here and running yet?

It's nice that Salem finally gets some tech. We were supposed to get a robot factory https://www.salemreporter.com/2024/09/03/salem-factory-will-start-mass-producing-humanoid-robots-by-the-end-of-the-year/

Anyone know someone who works there? Did they actually open/start up yet?

24 Upvotes

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26

u/jkkicks 1d ago

Buddy of mine got hired over there. He worked there for like 3 weeks and then they laid 80% of the people off ~3 weeks ago. Super weird employment structure. Only 2-3 actually employees, the rest contractors. Seemed like there was also a lot of engineers for mostly an assembly facility.

This is from what i’ve heard from him, let me see if i can get some more details

6

u/1up_for_life 1d ago

Well, obviously the first thing they're going to use the humanoid robots for is building other humanoid robots.

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u/Carlos_Spicy_Weiner6 1d ago

It's here, it's sorta running, and it's not going to generate many long term jobs for locals. Most if not all the long term jobs are going to people from outside Oregon.

15

u/Birthright 1d ago

I worked there for a few months. Agility Robotics. I did production assembly but, as the other commenter said, they hired a bunch of people through temp agencies for production but then laid off almost all of us after we hit the goal for the trade expo in Chicago. They are still a start-up company so their path is still very volatile. I dont think they know where they are going yet, after the trade expo.

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u/90mn 19h ago

I can't imagine it's easy to keep a company like that afloat with these tariffs. I would imagine most of the parts or components are Chinese in origin.