The Robot That Already Has a Job: Agility Robotics Opens a Training Facility Next Door to Tesla
While Tesla talks up its Optimus robot, a smaller company called Agility Robotics is quietly earning money from humanoid robots today, and just opened a new 60,000-square-foot training site in Tesla's California backyard.
Key points
- Agility Robotics opened a 60,000-square-foot robot training facility in Fremont, California, steps from where Tesla plans to build its Optimus humanoid robots.
- Agility says it has secured $300 million in contract orders for its humanoid robot, called Digit.
- Digits have already moved 100,000 totes at a GXO logistics facility, making Agility one of the very few humanoid robot companies generating real revenue.
- More than 30 customers are in active talks to deploy Digit, and a new version 5 robot is expected this autumn.
- Agility expects to become the first pure-play humanoid robot company listed on public stock markets later in 2025.
Agility Robotics has picked a bold neighbourhood for its new training base. The 60,000-square-foot facility sits in Fremont, California, just up the road from the factory where Tesla plans to manufacture its Optimus humanoid robot, a six-foot-tall machine CEO Elon Musk recently called "the biggest product ever."
The difference is that Agility's robot already has a job.
Digit, Agility's humanoid, carries totes and bins in warehouses and factories for paying customers including Amazon, GXO Logistics, Schaeffler, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. That puts Agility in rare company: most humanoid robot firms are still in the demo-video stage.
The new Fremont site is where Digit will practise new skills. Think of it as a warehouse simulator, built so the robot can rehearse tasks in conditions close to what it will face in the real world. CEO Peggy Johnson told TechCrunch AI that more than 30 prospective customers are currently in talks about deployments.
"We have commercialized," Johnson said. "We now know what it takes to walk into these facilities and meet their safety bars, their regulatory bars, compliance, plug into their IT infrastructure."
Agility was founded in 2015 by researchers who developed new ways to keep two-legged robots from falling over. That decade of real-world experience matters. But the company is also leaning on the same wave of AI that powers chatbots to help Digit learn a wider range of tasks.
Co-founder Damion Shelton drew a careful line, though. Safety controls, he said, must never run on generative AI, the kind of system that produces creative, sometimes unpredictable outputs. "You don't want to get creative with your safety stack," he said. Generative AI is useful for expanding what Digit can do, not for deciding whether it is safe to do it.
Today Digit works in areas kept clear of people. The version 5 robot, due this autumn, will be able to sense humans nearby and will no longer need a human-free zone around it.
Agility is not chasing the home-robot dream that grabs headlines. Co-founder Jonathan Hurst sees enough work in warehouses and factories to fill a very long roadmap: totes first, then picking, then loading lorries, then a market he estimates at 100 million robots.
A reverse merger, a deal that lets a private company join the stock market by combining with a listed shell company, is expected to make Agility publicly traded before the end of 2025. If that goes ahead, investors will be able to buy shares in the only pure-play humanoid robot company on a public exchange.
For ordinary people that means one thing: the robots quietly moving packages in warehouses are closer to your front door than the flashy concept videos suggest.
