Humanoid robot creator Agility Robotics targets $400M funding round – News

Humanoid robots in the workplace are moving closer to reality with the news that Agility Robotics Inc. is closing in on a $400 million funding round to help it start mass-producing its autonomous, bipedal warehouse machines.

That’s according to a report in The Information, which cites an anonymous source as saying that the round will bring Agility’s valuation to a cool $1.75 billion once it has been made official. The investment is reportedly being led by WP Global, with participation from SoftBank Group Corp.

Agility Robotics, which refused to comment on the report, is led by former Microsoft Corp. executive Peggy Johnson, who became its chief executive last year after stepping down from the CEO role at the mixed reality startup Magic Leap Inc. in 2023.

The company is among a number of well-funded startups trying to spark life into the concept of humanoid robots, which once only existed in the realms of science fiction. It’s the creator of a bipedal warehouse robot called Digit, which stands at five feet, nine inches tall and is designed to walk around and move like a human, carrying boxes and crates and performing related tasks autonomously.

The Digit robots are an expensive piece of kit, currently priced at more than $100,000, yet that hasn’t stopped companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Spanx LLC and GXO Logistics Inc. from investing in several of them.

Do work! Digit has helped move well over 10k orders through this @SPANX facility managed by @GXOLogistics. pic.twitter.com/c1udvLpXLp

— Agility Robotics (@agilityrobotics) August 8, 2024

All told, Agility Robotics has sold around 100 Digit robots to customers, and many of them have already been put to work. Last June, GXO revealed that several of the Digits robots had started work at one of its facilities in Atlanta, with plans to deploy more of them in future.

News of the latest funding round comes just days after the company announced a major update to Digit. On Monday, it said Digit is being improved with a longer-lasting battery and features that enable it to autonomously dock itself at a charging station, additional safety features, and redesigned limbs and end effectors, which give it a wider range of “grasping angles,” the company said. It also received more safety features, paving the way for Digit to work alongside humans.

Agility Robotics’s last major funding round was disclosed in April 2022, when it raised $150 million from investors including DCVC, Playground Global and Amazon via its Industrial Innovation Fund. According to data from PitchBook, the company closed the latest $400 million round on Monday, and Amazon was named as a participant.

Last year, the startup showcased Digit’s capabilities at an Amazon-owned warehouse in Seattle, demonstrating its ability to organize and reposition storage containers. At the demonstration, the company explained that Digit can autonomously sense, grasp and move bulky objects weighing up to 35 pounds while navigating an environment that’s designed for human workers.

Digit can do this because it’s equipped with an array of sensors, including various antennas, LED eyes that blink to indicate the direction it’s turning, cameras and LiDAR, which is a Light Detection and Ranging system also used in self-driving cars, used to scan everything in close proximity.

Being humanoid, Digit boasts two robotic arms and a pair of chicken-like legs. According to the company, the legs were designed to allow it to navigate a variety of different terrains safely, rather than for their aesthetics.

The autonomous capabilities of Digit are powered by artificial intelligence algorithms developed in collaboration with Nvidia Corp. Last month, Agility Robotics said it’s expanding its partnership with the chipmaker. It’ll be making use of tools such as the Isaac Sim platform for robot simulations, and the Isaac Lab machine learning framework to teach Digit new behaviors.

Although there’s only a small number of Digit humanoids in the workplace today, the new funds suggest that the company is getting closer to its goal of being able to mass-produce its robots. In September, it announced plans to build a robot manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon, that will eventually have the capacity to produce more than 10,000 Digit machines per year.

It’s worth noting that Agility Robotics is competing in an increasingly crowded market for humanoid robots, though, and many of its competitors have raised some serious cash too. For instance, Figure AI Inc. closed on a $675 million funding round just one year ago, while Apptronik Inc. announced it had raised $350 million as recently as last month. Other rivals include the Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.-backed Rainbow Robotics Inc., which closed on a $181 million round late last year, and the secretive Collaborative Robotics Inc., which is backed by more than $140 million in funding.

Photos: Agility Robotics