Agility is the first pure humanoid robot company on the stock market. Are you buying?

Almost a twelvemonth agone to the day, Figure AI CEO Colby Adcock responded to immoderate gentle societal media taunting from rival robotics institution Agility with a prediction: “You’ll beryllium bankrupt successful <12 months.”

Instead, Agility is going nationalist done a reverse-merger that volition spot it go a publicly-traded institution and rise $465 cardinal successful caller superior from retail investors and a tranche of backstage funding. The transaction volition instrumentality spot done a peculiar intent acquisition company, oregon SPAC.

“You don’t spot a batch of dancing robots oregon backflipping robots from Agility,” CEO Peggy Johnson told TechCrunch up of the company’s marketplace debut. “We stuck to our strategy, which [are] these manual, precise repetitive jobs, that it’s hard to find humans to do.”

Agility predates the caller roar successful carnal AI investment. The institution was spun retired of Oregon State University successful 2015 by a radical of researchers who made headway successful figuring retired however to get a robot to locomotion safely connected 2 legs. The institution has focused connected deploying a fistful of its Digit robots successful concern settings with 9 antithetic customers, including Schaeffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and Mercado Libre. Digits are mostly utilized to determination dense totes, including much than 100,000 of them astatine a GXO logistics facility.

Compared to humanoid robots built by Figure, Tesla, 1X, oregon Boston Dynamics, Agility’s Digit tin look plodding, but the robot is really doing existent work, and earning wealth — albeit conscionable $174,000 successful the archetypal six months of 2026, and mostly from related parties. The institution mislaid $362 cardinal successful the aforesaid clip period, which means the timepiece is ticking for it to successfully deploy its infusion of caller capital.

The bully quality is that Agility has $300 cardinal successful planned contracts from 30 customers for its caller procreation of robot, Digit 5. The caller exemplary tin safely run astir humans, not conscionable successful an isolated enactment compartment similar its erstwhile exemplary (and so astir humanoid robots). That woody was “one of the driving factors” down the determination to instrumentality the institution public, Johnson said, but could not yet uncover who the customers oregon accidental if they are investors.

To adjacent the deals, Johnson said that Digit 5 volition person to deed undisclosed targets on respective metrics, including throughput, uptime, and accuracy of placement. The institution has yet to amusement disconnected the prototypes of Digit 5, but Johnson said they volition beryllium demonstrated astatine CES 2027 and wide disposable astatine the extremity of that year.

The company’s transportation is that a robot tin prevention $100,000 a twelvemonth for companies nether a robot-as-a-service exemplary and adjacent much if the lawsuit purchases the robot outright. Whether those portion economics enactment retired successful the extremity volition beryllium connected Digit 5’s capabilities, some successful presumption of task accuracy, and however agelong it tin enactment without pauses for recharging oregon maintenance.

Johnson gave the illustration of a azygous idiosyncratic lifting a 50-pound entity — an informal threshold immoderate workplaces usage to debar injury. “Digit tin bash that implicit and implicit and over,” she said. “You don’t privation to springiness a quality that job. You privation to springiness that to the robot.”

Agility faces 2 cardinal questions: How rapidly tin it find caller customers for Digit 5, and however rapidly tin it amended connected the robot’s capabilities? Prospective customers request to walk $500,000 for Agility to bash an on-site impervious of conception earlier a deployment is afloat scaled up; determination were 4 customers signed up successful May, 2026. And portion Agility tin prime up dense loads and spot them with 98% accuracy, it inactive — similar astir of today’s robots — lacks the quality to bash analyzable manipulation tasks.

It’s inactive not wide however rapidly generative AI techniques volition unlock the benignant of dexterity that could let robots to grip a wide assortment of items. Training systems based connected video and teleoperation information person not led to reliable wide autonomy, though adapting the transformer architecture to antithetic modalities appears promising to carnal AI researchers.

“There’s nary net of carnal information of robot movements, and that’s wherefore you spot truthful galore radical trying to simulate the information utilizing a assortment of things, and we usage each of those techniques arsenic well,” Johnson said. “They person their pros and cons, but we besides person … 65,000 hours of existent operational information from existent customers successful existent facilities…that helps america accelerate the grooming of Digit.”

Johnson said the superior raised successful the SPAC transaction would conscionable the company’s existent needs, but wouldn’t task that it would beryllium capable for the institution to beryllium self-sustaining. She wouldn’t stock accumulation targets for Digit 5, but the institution has said its accumulation installation could nutrient 10,000 of the robots annually.

“What you’ll spot from america going guardant is continuing to perceive to our customers, knowing what they request successful these facilities,” she said. “We’re taking our cue from them due to the fact that we’re gathering a business.”

For each the unfastened questions, Agility inactive finds itself further up of astir humanoid builders by dint of simply putting its merchandise successful the field.

“Let’s commencement with the bins and the totes, and past let’s bash the picking and the kitting,” cofounder and CTO Johnathan Hurst told TechCrunch astatine the opening of the company’s Fremont R&D installation this summer. “And past let’s similar commencement moving connected cardboard, which is truly hard, and loading and unloading tractor trailers and things similar that. Okay, present we’re astatine 100 cardinal robots, you know? A trillion-dollar company.”