Here is a robotics number you can actually check. Symbotic’s Q2 FY2025 10-Q, filed May 2025 and indexed by EdgarBeast at sec.gov, reports "46 Systems in Deployment during the fiscal quarter ending March 29, 2025, as compared to 37 Systems in Deployment during the same" quarter a year earlier.
A count of operating systems is the cleanest metric in autonomy. It is not a TAM, not a demo, not a disengagement statistic with contested methodology — it is the number of full warehouse-automation systems the company is actively standing up at customer sites, disclosed under audit. Up from 37 to 46 year over year is real deployment momentum, statable in one line.
The framing the desk keeps returning to: backlog is the only honest demo, and "Systems in Deployment" is backlog becoming reality. Each system is a multi-month, capital-heavy build at a distribution center, so the count rising means contracted work is converting into operating infrastructure — the hardest and most meaningful transition for a hardware automation business.
The metric also keeps the analysis grounded against the humanoid keynote cycle. While prototype bipeds dominate the robotics imagination, the machines generating warehouse ROI today are these fixed-purpose systems, and the only fair way to size that is to count the ones running. The 10-Q gives you exactly that count, with a prior-year comparison built in.
Read it as the antidote to robotics hype: a simple, audited, year-over-year number — 46 versus 37 — that tells you the unglamorous automation is scaling. The sec.gov disclosure is contemporaneous as of May 2025; discovery via EdgarBeast.