Humanoid robots are on the AI bandwagon, and the up-and-coming Agility Robotics backed by Nvidia is about to land on the US stock market

Zhitongcaijing · 2d ago

The Zhitong Finance App learned that humanoid robot company Agility Robotics is one step closer to going public — Churchill Capital Corp XI (CCXI.US) has set November 2 as the date to vote on the SPAC deal. The boards of both Agility and Churchill XI (CCXI) have unanimously approved the proposed business merger. The humanoid robot maker is valued at $25 billion before new funding and will be traded on NASDAQ under the ticker AGLT.

Agility left Oregon State University's Dynamic Robotics Laboratory in 2015, founded by Jonathan Hurst, Damion Shelton, and Mikhail Jones. An early biped research robot, Cassie, was introduced in 2017, laying the foundation for the 2019 Digit — equipped with a torso, arms, sensors, and greater computing power. The company gradually moved from motion control research to actual material handling in warehouses and factories. Peggy Johnson (Peggy Johnson), a former Microsoft executive and CEO of Magic Leap, became CEO of Agility in 2024, responsible for advancing commercialization and scale.

“Humanoid robots are moving from 'technically possible' to 'practical, 'and our focus is on building the technology, customer relationships, and operational foundation needed to enable large-scale deployment,” Johnson said earlier this month.

Commercial milestones include a 2024 “Robot-as-a-Service” (RaaS) agreement with GXO Logistics (GXO.US), which allows customers to obtain robots as a service rather than directly purchasing hardware. Agility's recently reported commercial deployment involves GXO, Schaeffler (Schaeffler), Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada), and MELI.US (MELI.US), and has obtained deployment commitments at nine customer facilities. In September of this year, Agility unveiled Digit 5 — its next generation humanoid robot designed for large-scale collaborative safe operations. Digit 5 is based on over 65,000 hours of actual operation and years of commercial deployment experience, incorporating customer feedback and technology upgrades to drive its wider adoption in manufacturing, warehousing and logistics.

Agility Robotics' well-known investors include Amazon (AMZN.US), NVDA.US (NVDA.US), SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (SoftBank Vision Fund 2), DCVC, Playground Global, and Schaeffler (Schaeffler).

Agility Robotics will compete with Figure AI, Tesla's Optimus (TSLA.US) project, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics (Boston Dynamics), Ubtech Robotics, and 1X Technologies in the emerging humanoid robot market, particularly in the field of industrial and warehouse automation.