Agility’s Digit 5 Is the First Humanoid That Doesn’t Need a Cage — And It’s Going Public

The fences are coming down.

Agility Robotics just unveiled Digit 5, the fifth generation of its warehouse humanoid — and it’s the company’s first robot built to work right next to humans, with no safety barriers. Where the Digit 4 spent its life behind wire mesh, the Digit 5 walks the same floor as you.

And Agility is taking the whole company public to pay for what’s next.

The IPO: Nasdaq, Ticker AGLT

At its Analyst and Investor Day in New York, Agility confirmed it plans to go public on Nasdaq through a business combination with Churchill Capital Corp XI, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. The combined company will trade under the ticker AGLT and keep the Agility Robotics name.

This wasn’t a quiet filing. The investor day was livestreamed, with executives from Schaeffler and Foxconn joining Agility leadership on stage, alongside the robotics industry group AUVSI. When your supply chain partners and customers show up to your IPO roadshow, that’s a signal.

Earlier this year, Agility also opened a new facility in Fremont, California dedicated to hardware and Physical AI development.

“Humanoid robotics is moving from what’s possible to what’s practical,” said CEO Peggy Johnson, noting that three years of commercial deployments shaped every design decision in Digit 5.

The Big Idea: Cooperative Safety

Here’s what makes Digit 5 genuinely new. Industrial robots have always needed cages — safety fences that eat floor space and slow everything down. Digit 5 is Agility’s first humanoid designed for cooperative safety at scale: it works close to people without the fences.

How? An AI-based human detection system with multiple sensors constantly watches for people. When someone gets too close, the robot can walk around them, stop, or lower itself into a seated position. Lights and sounds tell nearby workers what the robot is about to do, and a separate safety controller double-checks every response.

That seated pose is my favorite detail. CTO Prasa Velagapudi described it as “not a display of fear or submission, but part of a safe movement system“ — the robot’s way of showing it won’t hurt you. A 284-pound machine politely sitting down to put you at ease. That’s the kind of design thinking that turns a machine into a coworker.

Under the hood, Digit 5 runs on NVIDIA IGX Thor hardware with NVIDIA Halos robotics safety software.

The Specs

The numbers are serious:

• Lifting: 50 pounds repeatedly — 40% more than Digit 4
• Size: 5 feet 11 inches tall, 284 pounds, arms reaching 7.2 feet high
• Battery: 90 minutes of runtime, 9 minutes to recharge — a 10:1 run-to-charge ratio enabling more than 20 hours of productive work per day
• Hands: grippers now swap on standard mounting flanges, so one robot can move between tote handling, machine tending, kitting, sequencing, inspection, and palletizing

That last point matters more than it sounds. Digit 4 mostly moved totes behind fences. Digit 5 is a generalist — the same robot can do six different jobs in a shift. That’s the difference between a tool and a workforce.

The Business: $300M in Orders, Robots as a Service

Agility says it holds more than $300 million in orders for Digit 5, spread over multiple years. Company filings outline illustrative pricing of about $8,500 per month per robot under a robots-as-a-service model, plus a one-time deployment fee of about $25,000 — though the company cautions final contracts may differ.

This isn’t vaporware pricing. The Digit 4 already works at Amazon, GXO, Schaeffler, and Toyota sites, with the fleet logging more than 65,000 operational hours. At one GXO facility, the robots moved 100,000 containers at about 98% accuracy.

That’s the part competitors should worry about: Agility isn’t selling a demo. It’s selling the next version of something that’s already done the job.

When Can You Get One?

Early access to Digit 5 starts in the first half of 2027, with full availability by the end of that year. Agility also plans to sell Digit in the European Union and the United Kingdom for the first time.

Why This Matters

The humanoid race has two lanes right now. One is chasing the sci-fi dream — the do-everything home robot, years away. The other is boring, profitable, and happening now: warehouse work, proven task by task.

Digit 5 is the strongest entry yet in that second lane. The fences coming down is the real milestone — not because it’s flashy, but because it means the robot is finally safe enough, predictable enough, and polite enough to share your floor.

If Agility delivers on the safety claims and the RaaS pricing holds, the warehouse of 2027 looks very different. And with $300 million in orders already on the books, the market seems to agree.

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Sources

• Agility Digit 5 Humanoid Unveiled Ahead of IPO — My Electric Sparks: https://myelectricsparks.com/agility-digit-5-humanoid-ipo/
• Agility Robotics: https://www.agilityrobotics.com/