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SoftBank Leads $500 Million Round Valuing Agile Robots at $8.5 Billion, Less Than the Round Discussed in June

Agile Robots, a Munich maker of industrial robot arms, hands, mobile and humanoid robots and the AI models that run them, said on November 12 it closed a $500 million Series F at an $8.5 billion valuation. SoftBank Group led, with Nvidia, Hitachi Group and T.Capital among other investors, taking total funding to $2 billion. The company says it will use the money to expand in the United States and add production capacity, including in Germany. Quartz, citing Bloomberg, reports that about $800 million had been under discussion in June.

Times of AI Desk 3 min read Munich, Germany View as Markdown
A tall stack of oxblood cut-paper gears is lifted above a wooden workbench by a cluster of simple round sage paper balloons, with official Agile Robots and SoftBank logo paper clippings tucked into the torn paper beside the gears.

SoftBank is back as lead investor in German physical AI, with a smaller cheque than the company was reportedly chasing. Agile Robots, the Munich company that builds robot arms, hands, mobile and humanoid robots and the AI models that drive them, said on November 12 it had closed a $500 million Series F at an $8.5 billion valuation. The amount is short of the roughly $800 million that was under discussion in June, according to Bloomberg as cited by Quartz.

The round#

SoftBank Group led the round, with Nvidia, Hitachi Group (Hitachi and Hitachi Ventures) and T.Capital among the other investors, the company said. The round takes Agile Robots' total funding to $2 billion. SoftBank also led the company's $220 million Series C in 2021, Quartz reported, citing The Next Web. Nvidia's participation follows its pledge in Germany last month to invest in four German startups including Agile Robots, made without a figure.

The company says the money will pay for expansion in the United States, more production capacity, including in Germany, and entry into new markets. Early in 2026 it opened a production site at Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich, which it says can make up to 10,000 legged and wheeled humanoid robots a year.

What it sells#

Agile Robots was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Tech.eu reported. It says it has more than 20,000 robotic solutions installed worldwide, with customers in automotive, consumer electronics, healthcare and service industries. Its robots assemble products, handle components, inspect equipment and move materials around factories, according to Tech.eu. The company did not break that installed base down by robot type, so the humanoid figure above is factory capacity, not a delivery count.

Limits#

  • The valuation, investor list and installed-base figure come from the company's release; no investor amounts were disclosed, and the company did not say whether the $8.5 billion is pre- or post-money.
  • The comparison with the June talks rests on Bloomberg's earlier report as cited by Quartz; we did not read the Bloomberg original.
  • The Fürstenfeldbruck figure is capacity the company says the site has, not production or sales.

Sources#

Prior Coverage

Earlier Times of AI reporting on this thread.

Related Coverage

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