SoftBank-Led Agile Robots Raises $500M Series F at $8.5B Valuation

A German company that has deployed more than 20,000 industrial robot solutions now has a plant that can build up to 10,000 humanoids a year. Munich-based Physical AI company Agile Robots has raised a $500 million Series F led by SoftBank Group, valuing it at $8.5 billion and bringing total funding to $2 billion.

Agile Robots announced the round on Nov. 12. SoftBank Group led, with NVIDIA, Hitachi Group (Hitachi and Hitachi Ventures) and T.Capital among the participants. The company says the investors span the automotive, artificial intelligence, digital and industrial technology sectors. SoftBank is a longtime backer: its Vision Fund 2 led the company’s $220 million Series C in September 2021 at a valuation above $1 billion, so the new valuation is more than eight times that. According to Bloomberg, a round of about $800 million, with SoftBank anchoring more than $300 million, was under discussion in June, and the round closed smaller at $500 million. Hitachi Ventures also joined Graphon Labs’ $35 million Series A this month.

The company builds humanoid and mobile robots, robotic arms and hands, and the software and AI models behind them, aimed at automotive, consumer electronics, healthcare and service customers that want to automate tasks that have relied on human dexterity and judgment. It was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and says it has deployed 20,000 industrial robotic solutions across automotive, consumer electronics, logistics and other industries. It has more than 3,500 employees from almost 60 countries, including more than 2,000 R&D experts, and over 650 patents, and develops and builds its hardware and software in-house from more than 20,000 square meters of lab space.

Founder and CEO Zhaopeng Chen said the company wants to bring Physical AI out of the lab and into industrial production across logistics, automotive, electronics and manufacturing. The money will go to global expansion, a stronger presence in key markets and more production capacity. Agile Robots plans to strengthen its presence in the United States and speed up development of new robotics applications, while continuing to build out production capacity, including in Germany. A new site opened early this year in Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich, can produce up to 10,000 legged and wheeled humanoid robots a year. Dennis Chang, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said Agile Robots combines deep robotics expertise with the ability to execute at industrial scale, and that SoftBank looks forward to continuing to partner with Chen’s team.

Acquisitions have widened the business. In November 2023 it took over the operations of insolvent Munich robotics company Franka Emika, which now runs as Franka Robotics and serves as an AI robotics research platform. Last November it announced the acquisition of thyssenkrupp’s Automation Engineering business, and in April it closed the deal. The unit now operates as industrial deployment specialist Krause Automation, and the company said at the time it would add about 650 experts and 10 locations in Europe and North America. BÄR Automation and Idealworks are also subsidiaries, and its humanoid lineup includes Agile ONE. The company has not disclosed revenue.

Humanoid competition is heating up on both sides of the Atlantic. The closest comparison is fellow German company NEURA Robotics, based in Metzingen, which also builds the full stack from cobot arms and mobile platforms to its 4NE1 humanoid and the Neuraverse platform. In June it announced a Series C of up to $1.4 billion led by Tether at a reported valuation of about $7 billion, with the full amount contingent on performance milestones, a different structure from Agile Robots’ $500 million. In the US, Figure AI is valued at $39 billion and has tested its robots at a BMW plant, and Apptronik, partnered with Google DeepMind, raised $935 million in a Series A alone at a $5.3 billion valuation. Agility Robotics has built more than $300 million in multiyear contracts by renting robots to warehouses as a service and is going public through a SPAC merger at a $2.5 billion valuation. While those companies lean first on AI models or specific sites, Agile Robots starts from the manufacturing and delivery experience of 20,000 deployed industrial robot solutions.