An Agile Robots mobile humanoid picking parts from shelves at the company’s stand at Nvidia GTC Berlin, October 21, 2026, where it announced a parts-sequencing trial with Audi. Image: AUDI AG
A Munich company building humanoids for car factories is now one of Europe’s most valuable AI start-ups. Agile Robots has raised $500 million (about €450 million) in a round led by SoftBank, with Nvidia, Hitachi and Deutsche Telekom’s T.Capital also investing, valuing it at $8.5 billion, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The company confirmed the round in a statement.
Who is paying
SoftBank led the round but hasn’t said how much of it is its own money. It isn’t a new backer: it also led Agile Robots’ $220 million Series C in 2021, the round that first valued the company at more than $1 billion. Nvidia had already said it planned to invest, naming Agile Robots in October as one of four German start-ups it would back when it signed an industrial AI deal with the German government. Hitachi, which already works with Agile Robots on physical AI for manufacturing, is investing through its venture arm, and T.Capital is Deutsche Telekom’s investment company.
The new money takes Agile Robots’ total funding since it was founded to about $2 billion, according to the German news agency dpa. The round is smaller than first expected: Bloomberg reported in June that SoftBank was in early talks to anchor a round of about $800 million. Neither company has said why the final figure is lower.
What the money is for
Agile Robots says it will spend the money on breaking into the US market, developing new industrial uses for its robots and building more of them in Germany. Earlier this year it opened a factory in Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich, designed to make up to 10,000 humanoid robots a year. The New York Times reports that the round is also meant to prepare for a possible stock market listing, though there is no timetable.
Founder and chief executive Zhaopeng Chen set out the pitch in the company’s statement:
Embodied AI will fundamentally change the way the world makes, moves and produces things. We are bringing this technology from the lab straight into industrial series production.
Zhaopeng Chen, founder and CEO of Agile Robots (translated from German, via dpa)
Chen also told The New York Times that physical AI could help Europe close its gap with the United States and China in artificial intelligence.
From robot hands to humanoids
Agile Robots began in 2018 as a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, where Chen worked on highly sensitive robot hands. It now sells robot arms, hands and grippers, mobile transport robots, complete production cells and its Agile ONE humanoid, all run by its own control software. It says it has more than 20,000 automation systems installed with customers worldwide.
For the AI models that drive its robots, it leans on bigger partners. Google DeepMind lists Agile Robots as a partner for its Gemini Robotics models, the family whose latest version has humanoids sorting parts at Mercedes-Benz. In October Nvidia unveiled the Agile ONE SN, a humanoid for developers built by Agile Robots on Nvidia’s Isaac GR00T models and Jetson Thor computer and due in early 2027. The same week, Agile Robots, Audi, Dassault Systèmes and Nvidia announced a trial of its mobile humanoids picking and sequencing parts for final assembly at Audi’s Ingolstadt plant.
SoftBank’s bigger robot bet
For SoftBank, Agile Robots is one piece of a wider push into robots that learn tasks rather than follow fixed programs. In 2025 Masayoshi Son’s group agreed to buy ABB’s robotics division for $5.4 billion and invested in Skild AI, a US start-up building a general-purpose AI model for robots. Agile Robots gives it a European maker of both the machines and the factory software around them.
The valuation is hard to check from the outside. Agile Robots gave no revenue figures with the round, and it hasn’t said how many of its humanoids are doing paid work rather than trials like Audi’s.
Why it matters
Europe has few AI companies that rank alongside the big US and Chinese labs, and Agile Robots is betting that robots, not chatbots, are where it can compete. With SoftBank, Nvidia and Hitachi behind it, it now has the money to test that in American factories; whether its humanoids can earn their keep at scale is still to be shown.
Sources: The New York Times; Bloomberg; dpa via heise online; Audi.
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