The Zhitong Finance App learned that German robotics company Agile Robots announced on Thursday that it has completed financing of 500 million US dollars, led by SoftBank, with Nvidia (NVDA.US) and Hitachi participating, and the company's valuation reached 8.5 billion US dollars. The Munich-based humanoid robot and robotic arm manufacturer said it will use the capital to expand the US market and expand production capacity, including increasing production facilities in Germany.
According to reports, Agile Robots recently opened a robotics factory near Munich. It is expected to produce about 2,000 robots in 2026, and production may double or even triple in 2027.
Zhaopeng Chen, CEO of Agile Robots, described the competition to develop this technology as a capital-intensive “war” where companies scramble to develop physical AI and robots in an effort to get robots out of the testing phase. “We are fast approaching the tipping point where humanoid robots are more efficient,” Chen said.
Agile Robots is testing its latest systems at manufacturing customers such as Volkswagen's Audi. At the same time, the company also launched a small robot of about 40 kg (88 pounds) for universities and laboratories to test the performance of the underlying AI model in a real environment. The company is betting that this type of deployment will help generate the data the robot needs to make it more capable and easier to retrain for new tasks.
Agile Robots was founded in 2018 by researchers at the German Aerospace Center to develop humanoid robots, mobile robots, robotic arms, and control software. The company currently has more than 2,000 R&D experts and holds more than 650 patents. Chen said the company is nearing a tipping point where humanoid robots can be more efficient than humans in certain tasks, but challenges such as battery life, weight distribution, and the quality of real-world training data still exist.
According to reports, SoftBank has always been one of the most aggressive investors in this field, and its founder Sun Zhengyi placed robots at the core of the Group's AI strategy. However, Chinese regulators recently blocked SoftBank's $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB Ltd.'s robotics business.