Munich robotics company Agile Robots said on 12 November that it has raised $500 million in a Series F round led by SoftBank, which values the business at $8.5 billion. Nvidia, Hitachi, Hitachi Ventures and T.Capital also put money in. The company says the cash will fund expansion in the United States, new applications and markets, and more manufacturing, including in Germany.
“We bring Physical AI out of the lab and into industrial production, across logistics, automotive, electronics and manufacturing.”
Zhaopeng Chen, founder and CEO of Agile Robots, in the funding announcement · siliconangle.com ↗
The round is smaller than the roughly $800 million that Bloomberg reported in June SoftBank was discussing, and the announcement does not say how the $500 million splits between investors; coverage puts SoftBank's share at over $300 million. Agile has now raised about $2 billion in total. Revenue is not published. An unofficial Sacra estimate of $339 million for 2025 puts the valuation near 25 times sales, or about 12 times on a reported 2026 guidance of $690 million, so the two outlets that did the sum reach different multiples.
Agile builds industrial robots and, more recently, humanoids. A plant at Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich, opened in early 2026, can make up to 10,000 legged and wheeled humanoids a year. The company counts about 20,000 industrial robotic systems installed, more than 3,500 staff from almost 60 countries and over 650 patent filings. Its group includes Franka Robotics and Idealworks. It unveiled the Agile ONE humanoid in November 2025 and launched a 1.4-metre research version at Nvidia's GTC Berlin in October 2026, running on Nvidia's Jetson Thor and Isaac GR00T.
Promotional render of the Agile ONE humanoid used with the funding announcement
Image: SiliconANGLE
Partnerships fill out the picture: a Physical AI deal with Hitachi signed in September, a research arrangement with Google DeepMind to run Gemini Robotics on Agile's hardware, and a proof-of-concept humanoid trial at Audi's Ingolstadt site that began in October. Founder and CEO Zhaopeng Chen described the aim as robots working alongside people in factories and warehouses, while SoftBank's Dennis Chang pointed to Agile's mix of robotics expertise and ability to deliver at industrial scale.
About Agile Robots
Agile Robots SE is a German robotics and AI company, based in Munich with a second headquarters in Beijing, that makes industrial robots and automation systems for manufacturing and logistics. It was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center's robotics institute by Zhaopeng Chen and Peter Meusel.
SoftBank has backed it before: in September 2021 Agile raised $220 million in a Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, which lifted its value above $1 billion, with Xiaomi, Foxconn and Sequoia also investing. In November 2023 it bought Franka Emika, the Munich robotics company that had filed for insolvency earlier that year.
SoftBank also led Agile's $220 million Series C in 2021, which made it Germany's first robotics unicorn, and it has been active elsewhere in robotics, including the roughly $5.4 billion purchase of ABB Robotics. Agile has not disclosed humanoid shipments or orders, so the valuation rests on projected revenue and production targets.
Agile Robots founder with the company's robot
Image: Tech Funding News