This $5.5 billion robotics startup built a school for humanoids - Business Insider
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Key takeaways
- Humanoid robots are moving rapidly from showcase demos toward commercial deployment, with China leading the market through a booming rental sector that sees units such as Unitree’s androids hired for exhibitions, events and even marriage proposals at roughly 3,000 yuan a day; the company, now the world’s largest humanoid maker, is preparing a Shanghai listing while Beijing’s new nationwide initiative targets more than 100 high‑value application scenarios by the end of the year.
- In the West, AGIBOT unveiled its A3 humanoid in Europe and launched a robot‑as‑a‑service model in the United Kingdom to handle customer attraction, reception and smart‑retail tasks, while BMW announced the deployment of Figure 03 at its Spartanburg plant for logistics sequencing, building on a pilot that saw its predecessor assemble over 30,000 vehicles.
- Agility Robotics is set to go public via a SPAC merger, positioning itself as the only U.S. publicly listed pure‑play humanoid company with active commercial customers such as Amazon and Toyota.
- Meanwhile, Genesis AI introduced Eno, a wheeled general‑purpose robot with dexterous hands and a foundation‑model brain, aiming for industrial and laboratory rollouts by the end of 2026, and analysts at Roland Berger project the global humanoid‑robot manufacturing market could reach $750 billion by 2035 as labor shortages drive adoption, though they caution that safety standards and harmonised legislation will be critical for widespread industrial use.
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The latest news and analysis on robotics, from humanoid AI to real-world automation.
The latest news and analysis on robotics, from humanoid AI to real-world automation.
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This $5.5 billion robotics startup built a school for humanoids
By Rya Jetha The humanoid race is starting to move from lab demos into early commercial tests. San Jose-basedFigure AI, most recently valued at $39 billion, is beginning deployments in logistics and distribution centers. 1X, headquartered in Palo Alto, plans to ship more than 10,000 humanoids to homes later this year.
Oregon-based Agility Robotics is further along. The company plans to go public soon, and Digit, its humanoid robot, is deployed across nine customer facilities, including Amazon, Toyota, and logistics company GXO. Unlike most humanoid companies that are only building walking robots, Apptronik has both legged and wheeled versions of Apollo. Cardenas sees the biggest long-term potential in legged humanoids because they could eventually do anything a human can physically do. But he expects wheeled robots to be deployed sooner because they are safer. Legged robots have to support heavy batteries in their torsos, which consumes more power and creates safety risks if they fall.
Apptronik has other Robot Parks at customer sites across the world. Cardenas said more are coming.
"The dream is to have Robot Parks all over the world, and actually make them open to the public, so people can see how the future is being built," he said.
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