The humanoid robot race heats up after Agility Robotics begins to trade

Humanoid robot startup Agility Robotics AGLT began trading during the week. Shares were volatile in the first two days of action, showing an initial gain of more than 20% before settling back to closer to the $10 per share price used in the merger. Agility Robotics has the distinction of being the first U.S.-listed company focused purely on humanoid robots. It went public by merging with Churchill Capital Corp XI rather than through a traditional IPO.

The merger valued Agility’s existing equity at about $2.5B. The company brought in roughly $465M in gross capital before expenses. About $201M of that money comes from a private investment led by Foxconn FXCOF. Nvidia NVDA and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 are also backers.

Agility AGLT highlighted that it expects to use the fresh funding to bring Digit 5 to market and expand manufacturing. Digit 5 is built to work safely near people without the safety barriers earlier versions needed. Deliveries are targeted for the first half of 2027, with general availability by the end of 2027. Digit is already deployed at nine customer facilities, including sites run by Amazon AMZN, Toyota TM, and GXO GXO. The company plans to ramp up production at its RoboFab factory in Oregon and is building a new facility in Pittsburgh for software and AI work.

Agility Robotics AGLT expects annual losses to continue but has an order on its books worth more than $300M from one unnamed customer, covering 1K robots over three years. The contract requires Agility Robotics AGLT to hit delivery milestones and meet product specifications. Each Digit 5 robot will initially cost Agility about $150K in parts. The company expects that to drop to $75K at 1K robots a year and $30K at 10K a year.

Seeking Alpha analyst IPO Kitchen highlighted that Agility Robotics AGLT faces stiff competition from a number of competitors globally. In North America, the company's Digit 5 model will compete with Tesla's TSLA Optimus robot, Figure AI's 02 and 03 models, Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot, Apptronik's Apollo robot, 1X Technologies' NEO and EVE models, and Sanctuary AI's Phoenix robot. The list of competitors in Europe was noted to include Agile Robots, NEURA Robotics, and PAL Robotics, while in China, competition includes Unitree Robotics' H1 and G1 models, UBTECH Robotics' Walker robot, the Yuanzheng models from AgiBot/Zhiyuan Robotics, Fourier Intelligence's GR robot, and XPeng's XPEV IRON robot.