Agile Robots Raises $500 Million at $8.5 Billion Valuation

Agile Robots has raised $500 million at an $8.5 billion valuation in a round led by SoftBank, with Nvidia and Hitachi also investing, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing the company's announcement. The Munich-based maker of robot arms and humanoid robots said the money will fund expansion in the United States and added production capacity, including in Germany, to serve what it called rapidly rising demand.

Demand for what, exactly, remains unstated. The company did not disclose revenue in the announcement, and neither Reuters nor prior reporting has published a figure.

What does the money buy?

The company builds legged and wheeled humanoids alongside its robotic arms. Earlier this year it opened a factory in Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich. That plant can produce up to 10,000 humanoid robots a year, the company says. The figure is a stated capacity, not a confirmed output or shipment number.

Agile Robots reports more than 2,000 research and development specialists and over 650 patents. Both numbers come from the company itself. No third party has verified them.

How did the valuation move eightfold?

The $8.5 billion valuation is more than eight times the roughly $1 billion that SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 assigned to the company in its September 2021 Series C. That earlier round raised $220 million.

The company was founded in 2018 by Zhaopeng Chen. The German Aerospace Center, DLR, supplied much of its early technical base. At the time of the 2021 round, the product line covered force-controlled robot arms, an operating system for coordinating robots, five-finger robotic hands and medical robots, and the company maintained dual headquarters in Munich and Beijing.

The final round is smaller than what SoftBank once planned. Bloomberg reported earlier this year that SoftBank was in early talks to anchor a round of about $800 million, contributing more than $300 million of it. The round announced on Thursday came in at $500 million. Neither report disclosed revenue.

Where does this fit in SoftBank's robotics push?

The deal extends SoftBank's drive into robotics, a drive that just hit a regulatory wall in China. China's foreign-investment review office blocked SoftBank's $5.4 billion purchase of ABB's robotics business in China last week. SoftBank and ABB are now exploring a China carve-out for the deal.

Other investors are also paying up. Ohio's Path Robotics raised $300 million on November 11, nearly quadrupling its valuation. The pattern suggests a broad repricing of industrial robotics assets rather than a company-specific bet on humanoids.

What is still unknown?

Three gaps stand out in the announcement. Revenue is undisclosed. Actual production volumes at Fürstenfeldbruck are undisclosed. The split of the $500 million between SoftBank, Nvidia and Hitachi is undisclosed. The $8.5 billion valuation therefore rests on capacity claims and investor conviction, not published financials.

The eightfold valuation jump in four years also invites scrutiny. Vision Fund 2 valued the company above $1 billion in 2021, when it sold arms, hands and medical robots. The new valuation prices a company whose flagship product line has shifted toward humanoids, a category with thin commercial deployment so far. Investors are betting that the 10,000-unit annual capacity near Munich converts into shipments, and that US demand materializes fast enough to justify the arithmetic.

The next test is execution: whether Agile Robots fills the Fürstenfeldbruck plant, lands American customers, and discloses the numbers that would let the market judge the $8.5 billion figure against output rather than promise.