Agility Robotics Becomes First Humanoid Robot Maker to List on Nasdaq

Agility Robotics is an Oregon startup. It makes a two-legged warehouse robot named Digit. The company starts trading on Nasdaq this Thursday under the ticker AGLT. It is the first humanoid robot maker to go public on a U.S. exchange. It did so through a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company, led by Michael Klein. Agility is valued at roughly $2.5 billion. Yet its revenue last year was only $1.8 million. The company posted a net loss of $138.1 million. More than half of that revenue came from selling five robots to one of its own investors. Its customers include Amazon, Toyota, and the logistics company GXO.

This shows how different the world of physical products is from the digital one. Deploying robots on factory floors takes years. Even after that, profits do not come right away. Agility is the first humanoid robot company to go public. Still, it has far fewer paying customers than the amount of money investors have put into it.