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Agile Robots Raises $500 Million Series F at $8.5 Billion Valuation

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Pontus Armini
Written byPontus Armini

Agile Robots has raised $500 million in a Series F round led by SoftBank Group, valuing the Munich company at $8.5 billion. NVIDIA and Hitachi also invested in the round, which Agile Robots announced on November 12 and which brings its total funding to $2 billion.

  • SoftBank led the $500 million Series F, with NVIDIA, Hitachi, Hitachi Ventures and T.Capital among the other investors.
  • The $8.5 billion valuation is a large step up from the 2021 Series C, a $220 million SoftBank-led round that valued the company at about $1 billion.
  • The round is smaller than the roughly $800 million that Bloomberg reported SoftBank was discussing in June.
  • Agile Robots says it will use the money to expand in the United States and add production capacity, including in Germany, where its Fürstenfeldbruck plant can build up to 10,000 humanoids a year.
Zhaopeng Chen, in a brown leather jacket, stands beside a white and grey Agile ONE humanoid robot against a dark striped backdrop.
Agile Robots founder and CEO Zhaopeng Chen with the Agile ONE humanoid. Image: Agile Robots.

The investors

Agile Robots' announcement names SoftBank as lead investor, with NVIDIA, Hitachi and its venture arm Hitachi Ventures, T.Capital and unnamed others participating. It does not say how the $500 million is split between them.

Several of the investors are already commercial partners. Hitachi signed a Physical AI partnership with Agile Robots in September, covering the Agile ONE humanoid, robot arms and mobile robots, with solutions to be sold through Hitachi's HMAX Industry portfolio. At NVIDIA's GTC Berlin in October, Agile Robots launched Agile ONE SN, a 1.4-meter research humanoid built around NVIDIA's Jetson Thor computer and Isaac GR00T software.

SoftBank also led the 2021 Series C, which made Agile Robots Germany's first robotics company valued at $1 billion or more. In June, Bloomberg reported that SoftBank was in early talks to put more than $300 million into a round of about $800 million. The round that closed is $500 million.

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"Agile Robots combines deep robotics expertise with the ability to execute at industrial scale," said Dennis Chang, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers.

The deal adds to SoftBank's robotics holdings, which include the ABB Robotics business it agreed to buy for about $5.4 billion and a stake in Skild AI, whose $1.4 billion Series C SoftBank led.

Agile Robots does not publish revenue figures. Research firm Sacra estimates the company's 2025 revenue at about $339 million, which would put the new valuation at roughly 25 times that figure.

Production in Germany, expansion in the US

The company says the money will go toward a stronger presence in the United States, faster development of new robotics applications, entry into new markets and more production capacity, including in Germany.

Earlier this year Agile Robots opened a production site in Fürstenfeldbruck, west of Munich. The company says the plant can build up to 10,000 legged and wheeled humanoid robots a year. That figure describes capacity. Agile Robots has not disclosed how many humanoids it has shipped or ordered.

"This funding allows us to accelerate our global expansion, strengthen our presence in key markets and build out production capacity," said founder and CEO Zhaopeng Chen.

In a video released with the announcement, Chen said the company's next step is "robotics and AI together," with machines that "perceive, understand and act, from the lab to pilot to scale." He closed with: "See you on the factory floor and in your home." The written announcement names factories and warehouses as targets and does not mention homes.

Most of the business is industrial automation

Chen founded Agile Robots in 2018 as a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The humanoid is a recent addition to a business built on robot arms, robotic hands, mobile robots and the AgileCore software platform. The company says it has installed more than 20,000 robotic systems for customers in automotive, consumer electronics, logistics and other industries.

Its subsidiaries include the research-arm maker Franka Robotics, idealworks, BÄR Automation and Krause Automation, which it acquired from thyssenkrupp. Agile Robots now reports more than 3,500 employees from almost 60 countries, up from the more than 3,200 it cited in June, along with over 2,000 research and development staff and more than 650 patent filings.

The original Agile ONE was unveiled a year ago, in November 2025. Since then the company has signed a research partnership with Google DeepMind to run Gemini Robotics models on its hardware. In October, Audi began testing Agile Robots' mobile humanoids for parts sequencing at its Ingolstadt Production Lab. That project is a proof of concept, and no results have been published.

At $8.5 billion, Agile Robots is among Europe's most valuable robotics companies. NEURA Robotics, based in Metzingen near Stuttgart, has reportedly been raising about €1 billion with backing from Tether. More of our reporting on the company is collected on its company page.

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