Agility wants public money for the jump from nine sites to volume, and Unitree just set the price

Agility Robotics still expects to go public this fall, chief executive Peggy Johnson said in a Bloomberg Technology interview on Thursday, one day after Chinese rival Unitree Robotics closed 460 percent above its offer price in Shanghai ^[1][2]. The company is asking public investors to fund the move from Digit deployments at nine customer sites toward high-volume manufacturing, at a $2.5 billion pre-money equity valuation ^[3][4].

The vehicle is Churchill Capital Corp XI, with the combined company listing under the ticker AGLT ^[4]. The June 24 announcement outlined more than $620 million in expected gross proceeds: roughly $420 million from Churchill's trust, assuming shareholders do not redeem, and a $200 million PIPE led by Foxconn ^[5][7][8]. That means about 68 percent of the money is contingent on redemption behaviour Agility does not control ^[18], and the whole raise is worth roughly a quarter of the pre-money number it is priced against ^[19]. The deal remains subject to SEC review, Churchill shareholder approval and other closing conditions ^[6].

The headline commercial figure is more than $300 million in multi-year orders for 1,000 Digit v5 robots ^[9]. Agility describes it as potential contract value under three-year robot-as-a-service agreements, subject to product and deployment milestones, with warrants that vest as robots are deployed, and its SEC-filed investor presentation states plainly that the total is not current-period revenue ^[9]. Divided out, that is about $300,000 per robot across three years, or roughly $100,000 per robot per year, if every milestone lands ^[17].

What sits behind that is thinner. Agility has not disclosed current revenue, robot pricing or gross margins ^[10]. As of May it reported Digit at nine customer facilities and more than $390 million in equity raised since inception ^[11], which is on the order of $43 million of invested capital per deployed site ^[20]. Named customers and deployment partners include Schaeffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, Amazon and Mercado Libre, though the size of each deployment is unclear ^[12]. Digit itself moves totes and components inside warehouses and factories, work it was pointed at by a 2023 redesign ^[13].

Unitree's debut supplies the comparable the June deal did not have. Per the source account, the timing gives Johnson a fresh valuation reference for a sector whose private-market numbers have largely run ahead of revenue ^[14]. It is a reference for sentiment, not for Digit's unit economics: a first-day close in Shanghai says what buyers will pay, not what a bipedal robot earns per shift. Johnson has told investors that Agility would be the prospective US market's only pure-play public humanoid robotics business with proven commercial applications, a distinction that belongs to the investor case until the transaction closes and the market tests it ^[15]. It is also worth remembering that when Johnson joined in March 2024, after 24 years at Qualcomm and six years running business development at Microsoft, she described humanoid robotics as crowded with "demo-ware and hype" ^[16][21]. A 460 percent first-day pop is not evidence against that view.

Watch the redemption rate on Churchill's trust, because $420 million is the swing factor between a funded manufacturing ramp and a smaller one ^[8][18]. Watch whether SEC review forces disclosure of revenue, pricing or margin, the three numbers currently absent ^[6][10]. And watch the site count: nine facilities is the base Agility is asking to be valued off ^[3][11].