Agility Robotics to go public through $2.5 billion SPAC merger

Agility Robotics will go public through a merger with SPAC Churchill Capital Corp XI, setting a pre-money equity value of $2.5 billion for the Oregon-based maker of the Digit humanoid robot. The deal is expected to raise more than $620 million in gross proceeds, making it one of the largest public market entries in humanoid robotics to date.

What exactly is being announced?

The transaction combines Agility Robotics with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special purpose acquisition company. Once closed, the combined entity will trade on a major North American stock exchange under the ticker symbol AGLT. Both boards have unanimously approved the deal, which still requires shareholder approval and regulatory clearance before it can close later this year.

Roughly $200 million of the gross proceeds comes from a PIPE financing round led by Foxconn, joined by existing and new institutional investors. That Foxconn involvement is notable: the contract manufacturing giant has its own ambitions in robotics and automation, and its anchor position in the PIPE signals confidence in Agility's commercial traction rather than just its technology roadmap.

How much commercial traction does Agility actually have?

The company says Digit robots have logged more than 65,000 hours of operation across nine customer facilities. Named customers include Schaeffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and Mercado Libre. Agility also reports more than $300 million in multi-year orders for its next-generation Digit v5, though those figures are subject to contractual milestones, a qualifier worth watching as the company moves toward public market scrutiny.

Agility's RoboFab facility is designed to produce up to 10,000 humanoid robots per year, and the company says approximately 75 percent of Digit's components are sourced within the United States, a supply chain detail that carries political weight given current domestic manufacturing priorities.

A $2.5 billion valuation backed by real deployment hours and named enterprise customers puts Agility in a different category from humanoid startups that are still running lab demos.

Why does this matter for the humanoid robotics industry?

Agility is positioning Digit v5 as the first AI-enabled cooperatively safe humanoid robot, meaning it is designed to operate alongside people in shared industrial spaces rather than in fenced-off zones. The company calls cooperative safety the key requirement for scaled adoption, and it has partnered with Google DeepMind and Nvidia on that front. Nvidia recently selected Agility as the launch partner for Nvidia Halos, a safety platform for physical AI and humanoid robotics.

CEO Peggy Johnson cited a management estimate of roughly $1 trillion in addressable market across manufacturing, distribution, and logistics in the United States alone. That figure is speculative at this stage, but the underlying logic is straightforward: labor shortages in warehouse and factory environments are real, and humanoid robots are the only form factor that can slot into infrastructure built for people without requiring facility redesign.

Going public via SPAC gives Agility faster access to capital than a traditional IPO process, but it also means the company will face quarterly earnings pressure earlier than it might prefer. Investors will be watching whether those $300 million in Digit v5 orders convert to recognized revenue, and how quickly RoboFab can scale production to meet them.

What happens next?

The deal is expected to close later in 2026, pending shareholder votes and regulatory review. Once trading begins under AGLT, Agility will become one of the few publicly listed pure-play humanoid robotics companies, giving the broader market a real-time benchmark for how investors value commercial deployment progress in this sector. Competitors and potential customers alike will be paying close attention to every quarterly disclosure.