Agility Robotics, maker of the Digit warehouse humanoid, is going public through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a SPAC, or shell company that takes a private firm public without a traditional IPO, at a $2.5 billion valuation.
Once it lists on Nasdaq as AGLT, Agility will have to report quarterly financials. That will put the real cost and utilization of a warehouse humanoid on the public record for the first time.
DC and 3PL operators evaluating humanoid pilots currently have no independent benchmark and rely on vendor ROI claims. Quarterly SEC filings change that.
The deal: The merger brings Agility more than $620 million in gross proceeds:
About $420 million from Churchill Capital Corp XI's trust, assuming no redemptions
A $200 million PIPE, a private placement to institutional investors, led by Foxconn
The deal still needs an SEC S-4 review and a shareholder vote. Closing is expected this year.
Meet Digit: Digit is a bipedal robot that handles tote transfer between autonomous mobile robots and conveyors, machine tending, and stacking and sorting. The fifth generation, due in 2026, is designed to lift up to 50 lb. Agility manages the fleet through its Arc cloud software. All units come from RoboFab, its manufacturing facility with capacity for up to 10,000 robots a year.
On the ground: Digit operates at nine customer facilities and has logged more than 65,000 cumulative operating hours. Named deployments include GXO Logistics, which has moved more than 100,000 totes at a facility in Flowery Branch, Georgia, along with Schaeffler, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, Mercado Libre, and Amazon, which is also a strategic investor.
GXO is separately testing Apptronik's Apollo humanoid, putting two platforms head to head at the same operator.
What's next: CEO Peggy Johnson said “humanoid robots are a critical driver of American technology leadership and the future of global industry.”
The S-4 review and shareholder vote come first. Once the deal closes, Agility’s quarterly filings will publish unit economics data operators have had no independent source for.
In related news, Lingyi iTech, an Apple precision parts supplier, separately priced a roughly $1.1 billion Hong Kong IPO and flagged plans to direct a portion of proceeds into humanoid robot hardware, targeting 500,000 units a year by 2030, though no humanoid-specific figure is broken out from the broader raise.
