Agility Robotics Goes Public: A Measured Approach to the Humanoid Future

The humanoid robotics market is awash in money right now. Last week, AI2 Robotics, a Shenzhen-based startup that makes wheeled humanoid robots, raised roughly $735 million at a nearly $3 billion valuation. Earlier this year, Apptronik, an Austin-based maker of humanoid robots for manufacturing and logistics, closed a $935 million funding round valuing the company at more than $5.5 billion. Last fall, Figure AI, a San Jose-based startup developing general-purpose humanoid robots, self-reported that it closed on $1 billion in Series C funding at an eye-popping $39 billion valuation.

By comparison, Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics, is surprisingly measured. We spoke by phone last week, just after the company announced plans to go public through a merger with Michael Klein's Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The deal values Agility at around $2.5 billion and is expected to raise more than $620 million in gross proceeds, the largest capital raise in humanoid robotics history.

A First-Mover Advantage

Agility was founded in 2015 as a spinoff from Oregon State University. Based in Salem, Oregon, the company makes bipedal humanoid robots designed to work in warehouses and factories. Its SPAC maneuver is notable for a few reasons. It would make Agility the first pure-play humanoid robotics company to trade on public markets, giving retail investors direct exposure to a sector that has so far been available primarily to deep-pocketed VC funds. It also offers a rare window into the finances of a business in a space where most competitors closely guard their numbers and even the state of the tech they are building.

Asked why Agility is going public via a SPAC rather than raising another private round, Johnson said much of it boils down to the first-mover advantage the company enjoys when it's the first of its ilk to go public. For investors clamoring for shares in a buzzy robotics company, Agility is "an acceleration story and a timing story," she said. The proceeds will also help Agility ramp up production at its 70,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon, and fulfill an existing pipeline of customer orders.

The "Bird Legs" of Digit

Digit itself is a deliberately unfussy piece of hardware. It stands about 5'9", weighs around 160 pounds, and is designed to do one thing exceptionally well: move heavy objects in human-built spaces. Its most distinctive feature is a set of reverse-bend knees, which have been called "bird legs" that allow it to reach from floor level to overhead shelving without the knees colliding with warehouse racking. The robot's hands, with two thumbs and two fingers, are similarly task-specific; they're optimized for gripping heavy plastic totes, even as their contents shift in transit.

Johnson said Agility is "LLM-agnostic," drawing on models including Claude and Gemini to handle what she calls the semantic layer, translating high-level instructions into robot behavior. She described a recent test in which engineers scattered different types of trash on the floor and told Digit simply to "clean up this mess." The robot assessed, sorted, and binned everything correctly, including correctly identifying bubble wrap as non-recyclable.

The Physical AI Advantage

It's the physical layer, the mechanics of balance, locomotion, and manipulation, that Agility considers its core proprietary advantage, one built up over more than a decade of real-world deployment. "The LLMs had the entire internet to train on," she said. "When you think about the physical AI of humanoids—that doesn't quite exist yet." At most companies, anyway. Johnson believes Agility is the exception: "We may have the largest data lake of actual operating robotics data in real-world environments."

Beyond raw data, safety is where the gulf between Agility and its competitors is biggest and most consequential. While rival companies showcase their robots in lab demos and choreographed videos, Agility has had to meet actual industrial safety certification requirements to operate inside customer facilities. "You can't build your robot and then make it safe," she said. "That's a redesign. You have to have all of the safety certified, the electrical system, all of the parts, and the software to support all of that."

The Home Market: 10-Plus Years Away

As for the home, Johnson thinks humanoids will get there eventually, but she said not to expect them to deliver breakfast in bed anytime soon. It'll be "10-plus years," she said of the timeline, observing that warehouses and factories, for all their complexity, have fixed aisles and predictable equipment and workflows unlike chaotic homes, with dogs, babies, visitors, and objects left in unexpected places.

"At least roads have some discipline to them," Johnson added, comparing the challenge to that of autonomous vehicles. "Most of the areas that humanoids will be operating in don't."

Agility isn't ruling out the home market. Johnson said the company will enter it when it makes sense. For now, though, it's laser-focused on the warehouse market, given the growing numbers of retiring workers and younger workers who aren't willing to take physically demanding roles. "There's something like over a million jobs in the U.S. today in these areas that are unfilled," she said. "They're just very, very hard to hire for."

Agility Robotics' decision to go public via a SPAC is a significant moment for the humanoid robotics industry. It offers a rare glimpse into the finances and strategy of a company that is quietly building a real-world business while competitors race to raise ever-larger funding rounds. With a focus on safety, reliability, and real-world deployment, Agility is positioning itself as the steady hand in a sector often driven by hype. The home market may still be a decade away, but in the warehouses and factories of today, Digit is already hard at work.