Agility Robotics Goes Public on Nasdaq, Co-founder Eyes Future of Work

Agility Robotics, the Salem, Oregon-based innovator in humanoid robots, made its highly anticipated debut on the Nasdaq exchange Thursday, becoming the first U.S. company solely dedicated to this burgeoning field to go public. The company’s co-founder and Chief Robot Officer, Jonathan Hurst, presented an ambitious long-term vision for how humanoid robots will fundamentally transform labor, albeit with a pragmatic outlook on the timeline.

“We absolutely will have machines that can do all of the physical work that a person can do,” Hurst stated, cautioning that this transformative shift is a “grand challenge” that won’t unfold in the immediate future, but rather over many years. The public listing, achieved through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), valued Agility at $2.5 billion pre-investment and injected approximately $465 million in gross proceeds. Shares of Agility, trading under the ticker AGLT, closed up 2.2% at $11.51 on its opening day, notably bucking a broader market downturn that saw the Nasdaq fall 5.5%.

Agility’s flagship creation is Digit, a bipedal robot equipped with two arms designed to handle tasks in warehouses and factories. The latest iteration, Digit 5, unveiled in September, stands 5-foot-11, weighs 284 pounds, and boasts a 50-pound lifting capacity. It can reach heights of 7.2 feet and operate for over 20 hours within a 24-hour cycle. A critical advancement in Digit 5 is its ability to operate safely alongside human workers without the need for physical barriers, a significant departure from earlier models.

This crucial development was heavily influenced by feedback from Amazon, an early investor and tester of previous Digit versions. Amazon's warehouse trials, while demonstrating Digit's utility in moving and stacking bins, highlighted immense safety challenges associated with deploying dynamically stable, balancing robots next to people. Hurst explained that Amazon detailed the extensive safety certification process required for its own wheeled robots, emphasizing the difficulty for a balancing machine to meet such stringent requirements.

“The safety case to do this is unbelievably hard,” Hurst noted. Agility Robotics consequently dedicated years to engineering and collaborating on ISO safety standards for this new category of robotics. Digit 5 integrates AI and multiple sensors to detect nearby individuals, responding by steering, stopping, or even sitting down, all while using visual and audio cues to signal its intentions. This emphasis on human-robot co-existence without barriers represents what Hurst terms Agility’s “scaling moment.”

Beyond Amazon's crucial input, lessons from other industry partners like GXO, Toyota, and Schaeffler also shaped Digit 5’s design. Agility’s filings indicate that Amazon made an initial deposit in 2024 for five robots, and Amazon sales accounted for 58% of Agility’s $1.78 million net sales in 2025. While Hurst couldn’t confirm Amazon’s current customer status, he underscored its foundational role. With Digit 5, Agility has secured a commitment for a $300 million, three-year contract for 1,000 robots with an unnamed customer, contingent on milestones and specifications, with the robots being rented rather than sold.

Despite its small current revenue — $1.78 million last year and $174,000 in the first half of this year — and substantial losses of $362 million in the first half of 2026, Agility holds a unique position in the market. Its Digit 4 model has already logged over 65,000 hours across nine customer deployments, moving more than 100,000 totes at a GXO facility since June 2024. This commercial traction distinguishes Agility from rivals like Figure AI, which, despite a reported $39 billion valuation, is still largely in the pilot phase.

CEO Peggy Johnson, who joined in March 2024 after leadership roles at Magic Leap and Microsoft, emphasized Digit’s role in automating “manual, very repetitive jobs, that it’s hard to find humans to do.” Hurst, who founded Agility in 2015 with former classmates and students from his Oregon State University lab, where he built his first walking robot in 1997, views the Nasdaq listing as a mere waypoint on a decades-long journey. The company now has offices in Oregon, Pittsburgh, and Fremont, Calif., with its Salem factory designed to produce up to 10,000 robots annually.

Hurst ultimately envisions a future where robots are an integral part of daily human life, tackling tasks people prefer to avoid. He draws parallels to the agricultural revolution, where automation drastically reduced human labor in farming while improving overall societal well-being. Agility's public offering positions it to significantly expand its production and deployment, betting on the widespread adoption of its humanoid robots to reshape the landscape of physical work.

FAQ

Q: What is Agility Robotics' Digit robot primarily designed to do?

A: Agility Robotics' Digit robot, particularly the latest Digit 5 model, is designed to perform repetitive, physically demanding tasks such as moving and stacking totes and containers in warehouses and factories. Its key feature is the ability to work safely alongside human employees without the need for physical barriers.

Q: How did Amazon's testing influence the development of Agility Robotics' Digit 5?

A: Amazon's extensive testing of earlier Digit versions in its warehouses revealed significant safety challenges in deploying dynamically stable, balancing robots next to human workers. This feedback spurred Agility Robotics to dedicate years of engineering and standards development to create Digit 5, which incorporates advanced AI and sensors to ensure safe, barrier-free interaction with people, addressing Amazon's initial concerns about scalability.

Q: What is Agility Robotics' long-term vision for the impact of humanoid robots on work?

A: Agility Robotics' co-founder Jonathan Hurst envisions a future where humanoid robots can perform all physical work that people can do, integrating into everyday human life to handle undesirable tasks. He sees this as a long-term “grand challenge,” comparing the potential societal transformation to the automation that revolutionized the agricultural sector. The immediate goal is to fill difficult-to-staff manual jobs.