Agility Robotics

What Digit is

Agility Robotics makes Digit, a bipedal mobile manipulation robot^[1]. The phrase packs two abilities into one machine: legs that carry it through aisles and doorways laid out for people, and arms that let it grasp and move objects. That is what separates it from a robot arm bolted to a production line, which cannot go anywhere, and from a wheeled robot that only drives around. The company's official site says Digit has 65,000 hours of real production experience and that the robot is assembled in Salem, Oregon^[3].

The Amazon connection

Agility was already part of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund when Amazon began testing Digit^[1]. The trial therefore came after the investment rather than before it: the logistics side of Amazon held a stake in the company and then put the robot into its own operations. Testing on a customer's own site is the stage where a hardware company finds out what breaks; a machine that works in a lab still has to get through a live shift.

Building a factory

Agility announced RoboFab, a 70,000 square foot robot manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon^[1]. The company said it anticipated capacity of hundreds of Digit robots in RoboFab's first year, with the ability to scale to more than 10,000 robots per year^[1]. It also set out a timetable for buyers: customers in its Partner Program could expect the first Digits in 2024, with general market availability in 2025^[1].

Announcing a plant of that size is a statement about expected volume. A research project needs a workshop; a product needs a production line. The figure of more than 10,000 robots a year describes the ceiling the facility was designed to reach, which is a different thing from the number of machines actually ordered.

Customers in logistics and manufacturing

On 27 June 2024, GXO Logistics and Agility announced a multi-year Robots-as-a-Service agreement to deploy Digit in GXO's operations^[2]. Under that arrangement a customer pays for the robot's work on an ongoing basis instead of buying the hardware outright, so maintenance and upgrades sit with the supplier and the contract becomes a continuing relationship rather than a single sale.

Agility CEO Peggy Johnson said the company was the first with humanoid robots deployed at a customer site, generating revenue^[2]. That is the company's own description of where it stands; the announcement it came with was the multi-year GXO agreement.

Manufacturing brought a second kind of customer. Agility announced a minority investment from Schaeffler and an agreement under which Schaeffler intends to purchase humanoid robots for its global plant network^[4]. Schaeffler said it saw potential to deploy a significant number of humanoids across its network of 100 plants by 2030^[4]. An investment and a purchase intention in one deal link the two sides: the customer takes a stake and becomes a buyer, and the robot maker gets both capital and a route into factories that already exist.

Where it sits

Taken together, these pieces describe a particular route through the humanoid robot field: revenue-generating deployment at a customer site on one side, a company-owned factory with a stated capacity on the other, and service contracts in between. The 65,000 hours of production experience, the 2024 and 2025 delivery dates and the 10,000-a-year ceiling do the persuading — not what the robot can do in a demonstration, but that it is already working and can be built in quantity. Whether the capacity is filled depends on customers like the ones above turning intentions into orders.