Agility Robotics sets up shop near Tesla with a $300M head start in the humanoid race.

Agility Robotics Plants Its Flag in Tesla's Backyard:

A new Fremont training facility puts the humanoid robotics veteran right next to Tesla's Optimus operation — and highlights a very different bet on how AI should be used.

Why this $300M robotics company refuses to let generative AI touch its safety systems.

60,000 sq ft: New Fremont Facility

$300M: In Contract Orders

30+: Customers In Talks

Agility Robotics is setting up shop just up the highway from Tesla. The humanoid robotics company is opening a 60,000-square-foot facility in Fremont, California, to train its Digit robots, putting it within close range of the Tesla factory where Optimus robots are expected to begin production this year.

Tesla has made no secret of how much it's banking on Optimus. Elon Musk has said he expects the robot to become “the biggest product ever” once it becomes useful beyond Tesla's own operations, which he's projected for sometime next year.

1: A Robot That's Already Earning Its Keep:

Agility doesn't have anywhere near Tesla's capital, but it does have something Tesla doesn't yet: a robot that's already working, and generating revenue, in real facilities. Digit currently carries totes and bins in manufacturing and warehouse settings for customers including Amazon, GXO, Schaeffler, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. Agility says it has already secured $300 million worth of contract orders for its robots.

CEO Peggy Johnson told that having Tesla nearby is actually a welcome development after years of Agility operating largely on its own in the humanoid space. She pointed to the operational groundwork Agility has already put in: learning how to walk a robot into a real facility and clear its safety requirements, regulatory standards, IT infrastructure, and warehouse management systems.

Agility hasn't said publicly how many Digit units it has built or deployed, though outside estimates put the number of pilot and revenue-generating deployments in the dozens. At one GXO logistics facility alone, the company says its robots have moved 100,000 totes.

2: Heading to the Public Markets:

Johnson is currently guiding Agility through a reverse merger that's expected to make it the first pure-play humanoid robotics company to trade on public markets later this year. Founded in 2015 by researchers who pioneered techniques for safe two-legged walking robots, Agility is leaning on that head start as it competes against a newer wave of AI-driven robotics startups, including Figure, 1X, the Bot Company, and Sunday Robotics.

3: Keeping AI Away From the Safety Stack:

Even as transformer-based AI opens the door to major advances in robotic behavior, Agility is deliberately conservative about where it lets generative AI operate. Co-founder and chairman Damion Shelton drew a comparison to self-driving cars: just as you wouldn't want an anti-lock braking controller running on AI, Agility keeps every safety-critical process on a separate, non-generative path.

“The safety stack should never get creative — that has to run on a path completely separate from generative AI.”

— Paraphrased from Agility Robotics co-founder Damion Shelton, speaking.

4: Where Generative AI Actually Pulls Its Weight:

Where generative AI does play a central role at Agility is in scale. Shelton described an early moment when Agility board member and Quicktime inventor Bruce Leak asked how the company planned to program applications for the robot — a question the team didn't have a strong answer for at the time. The number of possible tasks a robot could perform, Shelton said, far outstrips the number of engineers available to hand-code them, which is exactly the kind of problem generative AI is suited to solve.

The new Fremont facility is built around that scaling goal. Johnson says more than 30 customers are currently in discussions with Agility about deploying Digit, and the facility will let the six-foot-tall robot practice new skills in settings that mimic the environments it will actually work in.

5: No Rush Into the Home:

Unlike several newer entrants to the humanoid space, Agility isn't pursuing in-home robots any time soon, a stance that lines up with most independent robotics experts, who don't consider today's robots safe enough for consumer settings. Digit currently operates in human-free zones, though the upcoming version 5, expected this fall, will be able to sense people and won't need to be walled off from them.

Co-founder and chief robot officer Jonathan Hurst says there's more than enough opportunity in manufacturing and logistics alone to keep Agility busy for years — starting with totes and bins, moving into picking and kitting, and eventually tackling harder problems like handling cardboard and loading and unloading tractor trailers. Hurst's own framing of the opportunity: get to 100 million robots, and you're looking at a trillion-dollar company.

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