Humanoid robot maker Agility Robotics said Wednesday that it plans to go public in a deal valuing the company at about $2.5 billion.
The deal would make Agility, which builds a robot called Digit, the first humanoid-focused company to go public in the US.
The startup, which spun out of Oregon State University in 2015, plans to merge with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) led by former Citigroup executive Michael Klein. It is expected to trade under the ticker AGLT.
“The timing is right, both for our company and for the market,” Jonathan Hurst, Agility’s cofounder and chief robot officer, told Business Insider. “We’re hitting now as a first mover, which is really important, and we want to be defining the humanoid industry.”
A SPAC is a publicly traded shell company with no operations or assets, other than a war chest of cash. It is created to eventually be acquired or merged with another company, allowing it to go public without a traditional initial public offering.
The structure boomed in 2021, when low interest rates fueled a wave of blank-check deals. While SPAC activity cooled in the following years, it is gaining renewed attention as the IPO market revives.
Hurst said the company chose the SPAC route specifically to bring in Klein, whose team has the financial expertise to complement Agility’s technical focus as it goes public. Klein is a prolific SPAC sponsor, and he has recently helped take companies such as Sam Altman-backed nuclear power company Oklo and electric vehicle maker Lucid public.
The deal is expected to generate more than $600 million in gross proceeds, including $420 million in cash from Churchill XI and more than $200 million through a common-stock private investment in public equity led by Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer that is an existing Agility investor. Other Agility backers include venture firm DCVC, Nvidia, Amazon, and SoftBank.
Hurst said going public will allow Agility to be more transparent as it scales and helps set benchmarks in a hyped-up industry.
Agility plans to expand its Digit robot
Agility said the money raised from going public will go toward fulfilling existing customer orders, expanding deployments, and scaling production of its next-generation humanoid, Digit v5.
Digit is a full-sized humanoid that can perform repetitive physical tasks, such as carrying heavy storage and sorting goods. Agility has already deployed its Digit robot across nine customer facilities, including those of Amazon, Toyota, and the logistics company GXO.
Agility is the first company to commercially deploy humanoids in the US. Tesla is developing Optimus, which it plans to begin producing this summer. Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics plans to deploy its Atlas humanoid in factories in 2028. Figure AI, most recently valued at $39 billion, piloted its humanoids at a BMW manufacturing plant in Germany and has a deal to deploy robots across the distribution and logistics network of Catalyst Brands, the parent company of JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers.
Agility said it has more than $300 million in multiyear orders for Digit v5. The robot’s battery is designed to charge quickly enough to operate for 20 of 24 hours, Hurst said.
Agility’s biggest focus, Hurst said, is safety. Any humanoid robot typically requires a physical barrier between itself and human workers, and Agility wants to create robots safe enough to operate without that.
“Digit v5 will be the first that can just walk into existing as-built environments without any additional infrastructure required, and do human workflows in human spaces,” Hurst said.
Agility is working with Nvidia on the safety system. This week, Nvidia announced Halos for Robotics, a safety system designed to help robots operate around people in industrial settings. Agility will be the first company to incorporate the software into its humanoids.
Agility’s SPAC deal comes as the humanoid robotics industry moves from flashy demos toward deployment. The market is dominated by Chinese companies such as Unitree, which is preparing to go public and targeting a valuation of up to $7 billion. Chinese robotics firms accounted for about 90% of humanoid robot shipments last year, according to Omdia.
