1886–1920 , founder of the company The company began in Stuttgart-West as the '''' (Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering) on 15 November 1886. From 1897, Bosch started installing
magneto ignition devices into
automobiles and became a supplier of an ignition system. In 1902, the chief engineer at Bosch,
Gottlob Honold, unveiled the high-voltage magneto ignition system with a
spark plug. In 1901, Bosch opened its first factory in Stuttgart. In 1906, the company produced its 100,000th magneto. In the same year, Bosch introduced the eight-hour day for workers. In 1910, the Feuerbach plant was founded near Stuttgart, where Bosch began producing generators and headlights (Bosch-Light) in 1914. The motorization of road traffic led to the company's rapid growth after 1900. Bosch had a workforce of 45 in 1901, which grew to more than 1,000 by 1908. Bosch's international development began in 1898 with the opening of a branch in London, followed the next year by Paris, Vienna, and Budapest. By 1909, Bosch was represented by trading partners on every continent. Bosch opened the first factory outside Germany in Paris in 1905 and the first on another continent in 1912 in Springfield, Massachusetts (USA). In 1913, Bosch founded an apprentice workshop to recruit young people for the production of automotive electrics. In 1937, Bosch AG became a limited liability company (
GmbH). The Bosch subsidiary Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH (DLMG) in Kleinmachnow employed around 5,000 people, more than half of whom were
forced labourers, prisoners of war, and female concentration camp prisoners, including many women from the
Warsaw Uprising. During the
Second World War, there were at least 3,000 workers in the mechanics division at the Bosch Hildesheim factory, almost all of them from nearby occupied countries; there were only 200 recorded German workers. In the last years of the war, all new German tanks included starter elements from the Bosch factory in Hildesheim. Bosch had a monopoly position in the outfitting of German Luftwaffe aircraft.
21st century In 2001, Bosch acquired
Mannesmann Rexroth AG, which they later renamed to
Bosch Rexroth AG. In the same year, the company opened a new testing center in Vaitoudden, close to
Arjeplog in north Sweden. A new development center for automotive engineering, in
Abstatt, Germany was constructed shortly after. In 2002, Bosch acquired Philips CSI, which at the time was manufacturing a broad range of professional communication and security products and systems including
CCTV, congress, and public address systems. In the 2000s the company developed the electric hydraulic brake, common rail fuel injection with piezo-injectors, digital car radio with a disc drive, and the cordless screwdriver with a
lithium-ion battery in 2003. In 2004, Bosch bought Sigpack Systems from
SIG. Bosch received the () from the German president in 2005 and 2008. A new development center was planned in 2008 in
Renningen. In 2014, the first departments moved to the new center, while the remaining departments followed in 2015. In 2006, Bosch acquired
Telex Communications and
Electro-Voice. In 2009, Bosch invested about in research and development. Approximately 3,900 patents are published per year. In addition to increasing energy efficiency by employing renewable energies, the company plans to invest in new areas such as
biomedical engineering. • • • • • • • In May 2019, Bosch said it planned to reach
carbon neutrality by 2020 by investing in clean electricity and a
carbon offset program. In July 2019, Bosch sold its packaging machinery business unit to
CVC Capital Partners, which was subsequently rebranded to Syntegon. Bosch has formed a strategic alliance with the
Technische Universität Darmstadt. In the first quarter of 2020, Bosch was certified as being carbon neutral, across more than 400 sites, worldwide. In 2020, Bosch funded the creation of a report entitled
Decarbonising Road Transport: There Is No Silver Bullet, which contained disputed information about the environmental performance of
electric vehicles. In January 2021, Volkswagen filed a class-action against Bosch and
Continental AG in the United States after VW was forced to reduce production due to a lack of automotive microchips. On 26 January 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that Bosch won on all claims. In June 2021, Bosch opened a newly built semiconductor manufacturing plant in which it invested , its largest-ever spending on a single project. In April 2022, Bosch acquired Five.ai, a
vehicular automation startup. Also in April 2022, Bosch acquired Arioso Systems, a
Dresden-based MEMS micro speaker producer, added to Bosch Sensortec GmbH. In July 2022, Bosch announced plans to invest into its semiconductor chip production and
research and development (R&D) over the next four years, including opening new facilities for manufacturing a computer chip development in
Dresden and
Reutlingen. China is both a market and a manufacturing location for Bosch. In 2023, Bosch had 58,000 employees in China and group sales of CNY 139.1 billion. In September 2023, Bosch acquired TSI Semiconductors, a
Roseville-headquartered
silicon carbide (SiC) power device manufacturer. In August 2025, Bosch acquired the heating and air conditioning operations of
Johnson Controls for . In September 2025, the company announced plans to cut 13,000 jobs at its auto parts business, representing 3% of its global workforce, in stages by 2030 as it relies more on
artificial intelligence. Bosch won the
German Future Prize again in late 2025, for developing a zero-emission fuel-cell power module to power heavy vehicles. The system transforms hydrogen and oxygen to electrical energy, emitting only water vapor, when using green hydrogen. In January 2026, the company was reported to be among the top 30 global investors into
R&D in 2025, while the Bosch Group's profits had reduced by almost half in the same fiscal year, with more than 20,000 job cuts in Germany by 2030, primarily in the mobility division. ==Business divisions==