Humanoid Robot Maker Agility Robotics Heads to Nasdaq

Keypoints:

• Agility is expected to start trading today under the ticker AGLT
• It's going public by merging with the SPAC Churchill Capital Corp XI
• The expected raise settled at about $465 million, down from more than $620 million
• The pre-money valuation is $2.5 billion
• The money will go toward customer orders and Digit 5 production

Agility Robotics, the company behind the Digit humanoid warehouse robot, is expected to start trading on Nasdaq today under the ticker AGLT. The company is going public by merging with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a SPAC, and the deal was expected to close on November 4 after a shareholder vote.

The numbers came in smaller than first planned. When the deal was announced in June, the companies expected more than $620 million in gross proceeds at a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation. 

After shareholders had a chance to redeem, the expected raise settled at about $465 million. That includes about $164 million from Churchill's trust account, about $201 million from a private placement at $10 a share led by Foxconn, and $100 million already received.

So why does this one matter? Agility bills itself as the only US listed pure play humanoid company with real commercial deployments. Its robots have worked with customers like Schaeffler, GXO and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and earlier generations of Digit have logged more than 65,000 hours of real world operation. Backers include Nvidia, Amazon, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Foxconn.

The newest robot is Digit 5, which Agility says is built for cooperative safety, meaning it's meant to work close to people. Agility also sells Agility Arc, a cloud platform for managing fleets of robots across facilities, and it runs a factory called RoboFab designed to build up to 10,000 robots a year. The company plans to use the new money to fill existing customer orders, expand deployments and ramp up Digit 5 production.

The listing lands in a busy stretch for robotics. One weekly roundup noted big funding rounds and humanoids heading into two more GXO warehouses. Public investors will now get to judge whether humanoids are ready to leave the demo stage and earn steady revenue.