Digit 5 Sets a New Bar for Humanoid Robot Safety

With its new Digit 5 robot, announced today, Agility Robotics may have found the sweet spot. Digit 5 is a humanoid worker that can lift 23 kilograms up 2.1 meters, can work in close proximity to people without relying on physical barriers, and can operate for more than 20 hours a day. This combination of power, safety, and battery life has resulted in a 1.8 m tall, 129 kg robot that prioritizes functionality over style and pretty much everything else, but this is exactly what it’s going to take to get humanoids a job. Where does Digit 5 go from here? Today’s press release says that “as of May 2026, Agility had more than $300 million in multi-year customer orders for Digit 5, with a sales pipeline of prospective customers across manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics.” That works out to comfortably under 1,000 robots, one-tenth of the full capacity of Agility’s RoboFab factory in Oregon.

Between now and all those robots, however, lies an unpredictable entry into the stock market through what’s called a SPAC merger. That’s expected to close within the next few months. Agility hopes to raise more than $620 million through the merger, and it will primarily spend the money to scale production of Digit 5, and get it to customers. Those in the EU and the UK should be able to buy the bots in 2027. Despite the recent deluge of videos of humanoid robots doing backflips and kung-fu, the actual pace of progress towards humanoids that can do economically viable jobs at scale has at times seemed a bit plodding. There are some good reasons for this: a humanoid robot needs to be powerful enough to do useful work, safe enough for humans to walk past, and have enough battery life to limit how much of the day it’s hooked to a charger. But all three of those necessary features actively work against each other.