Agility Robotics unveils Digit 5 humanoid ahead of planned public listing

Agility Robotics unveiled Digit 5, the latest version of its humanoid warehouse robot, on Thursday — a launch timed just ahead of the company's planned public listing via a SPAC merger with Churchill Capital Corp. XI. Agility says it now holds more than $300 million in multi-year customer orders across manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics.

What's New in Digit 5

The headline improvement is payload: Digit 5 can repeatedly lift up to 50 pounds, a 40% increase over its predecessor, made possible by a redesigned leg built around proprietary cycloidal actuators engineered to withstand repetitive lifting cycles without the wear that shortened earlier robots' service life. Battery performance improved even more dramatically — Digit 5 runs for roughly 90 minutes per charge and recharges in nine minutes, a 10-to-1 run-to-charge ratio compared with 2-to-1 on Digit 4. For a robot meant to work multiple shifts on a warehouse floor, that ratio determines how much of the day it can actually spend working versus charging.

The Safety Architecture Is the Real Story

CEO Peggy Johnson framed the launch around a specific bottleneck: "Digit 5 is removing a major barrier to scaling humanoid robots in industrial environments." That barrier is safety certification for robots working near people without cages or barriers, which has been one of the main reasons humanoid deployment has stayed limited to pilot programs rather than full production floors. Digit 5's new safety system continuously monitors nearby humans using proprietary AI algorithms and multiple sensor types, and responds by avoiding the person, stopping outright, or dropping into a seated position depending on the proximity and situation.

Agility is not building this safety stack alone — it's the first launch partner for Nvidia's Halos for Robotics platform, pairing its systems with Nvidia's IGX Thor compute hardware and Halos Core safety infrastructure. Nvidia's Deepu Talla, VP of Robotics and Edge AI, described the stakes plainly: "Safely operating around people and assets is what moves humanoid robots from pilots to industrial deployments at scale."

Why the IPO Timing Matters

Agility's move toward public markets via SPAC — rather than a traditional IPO — puts it on a faster timeline to raise capital and establish a public valuation, following a well-worn path for capital-intensive hardware companies that need funding before revenue catches up to R&D spend. Announcing a hardware and safety upgrade simultaneously with the public listing plan serves a dual purpose: it gives public-market investors a concrete technical narrative beyond the general humanoid-robotics hype cycle, and it demonstrates to the $300 million in already-committed customers that the platform is actively improving rather than static.

The Competitive Stakes

Humanoid robotics has drawn intense capital and attention over the past two years, with Tesla's Optimus, Figure, and several Chinese entrants all racing toward commercial deployment. What differentiates this announcement from typical demo-stage humanoid reveals is the combination of disclosed order backlog, a named enterprise safety-hardware partner in Nvidia, and a concrete near-term path to public-market capital — three signals of commercial maturity that most humanoid robotics announcements still lack.