Agility Robotics starts Nasdaq trading under AGLT

Churchill Capital Corp XI shareholders approved the merger at a special meeting on 2 November, with more than 84% of votes cast in favor, The Robot Report reported. Churchill stock closed up nearly 14% on 2 November. The SPAC was expected to close on 4 November, and the combined company began trading the next day under AGLT.

Agility is the first dedicated humanoid maker to become a publicly traded company in the United States, Ars Technica reported. The transaction is expected to provide about $465 million in gross capital before expenses, down from more than $620 million anticipated when the merger was announced in June, according to The Robot Report. That includes about $164 million from Churchill's trust account, about $201 million from a PIPE led by Foxconn, and $100 million in equity Agility received after the initial announcement. The original transaction valued Agility at a $2.5 billion pre-money equity value. Existing Agility shareholders rolled their equity into the combined company rather than taking cash.

What the filing says

In a securities filing, Agility acknowledged that humanoid robots remain unproven at scale and have not achieved widespread commercialization, unlike industrial robots with decades of proven track records in warehouses and factories, Ars Technica reported. The filing gives a rare look at the business prospects and potential unit economics of humanoid robots, Ars reported.

"When we are doing robots as a service, it is much lower risk for customers to use it because they are getting a return on investment on day one," Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics, told Ars Technica. "Because they're paying a rate that is comparable to the human labor rate, and that makes the economics pretty straightforward."

Agility rents out Digit under a robots-as-a-service model. GXO has not disclosed the robot count or contract price for its expansion. Agility says its customer program collects 90 days of operational data to assess uptime and throughput before customers decide how to expand.

Deployments and orders

Agility's Digit robots are operating in 9 customer environments, with logistics and manufacturing as the company's primary commercial markets, The Robot Report reported. At GXO's Flowery Branch, Georgia, warehouse, Digit moves totes onto conveyors alongside existing automation. The company says Digit has moved more than 100,000 totes there and reported about 98% accuracy while the robot was on task. Agility says Digit robots have accumulated more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation across commercial deployments and customer programs. That figure is cumulative across multiple robots and sites, not one machine's history. Neither figure establishes GXO's hourly throughput, and the expansion announcement gave no site-level payback calculation.

GXO and Agility announced on 26 October that Digit would go to facilities in Statesville, North Carolina, and Lebanon, Tennessee, both e-commerce fulfillment sites. Deployments are expected to begin in early 2027 with Digit 4, then move to Digit 5 when it is commercially available. Digit 4 operates in a separated workcell, including during ongoing RaaS deployments, according to Agility. Digit 5 is designed to work closer to people and reduce reliance on protective barriers. Agility is targeting a 50-pound payload and interchangeable grippers. Its Nyobolt-powered battery system is designed for 90 minutes of runtime followed by nine minutes of charging, compared with Digit 4's 2:1 run-to-charge ratio.

Outside logistics, AGCO signed an October agreement to pilot Digit at its Hesston, Kansas, production facility beginning in 2027. Initial tasks will include sorting and stacking parts and placing totes for storage, The Robot Report reported. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada signed a commercial agreement after a pilot, and Schaeffler is both an investor and a customer pursuing Digit for automotive manufacturing. Agility also claims more than $300 million in committed multi-year orders for Digit 5. That figure is subject to contractual milestones and is not current revenue.

What happens next

Agility expects early access for Digit 5 in the first half of 2027 and general availability by the end of that year. Its RoboFab facility in Salem, Oregon, is designed for annual production capacity of up to 10,000 robots.