Humanoid robots at work beyond Agility: what customers confirm

Outside Agility Robotics, no factory or warehouse customer has published its own count of humanoid robots working for it. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, GXO, Catalyst Brands, Schaeffler and Renault confirm humanoid projects in their own releases. BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Renault name a present task. Schaeffler's release names none, and Catalyst says it will still identify use cases.

The counts that do exist are small and come from press reports, not customer documents. The bigger numbers are something else. GXO, which has tested humanoids from Agility, Apptronik and Reflex, said on its August 2026 earnings call that it had run 45 humanoid pilots, had not yet achieved a return on them, and would have zero humanoids in production in 2026. UBTech sold 921 full-size humanoids in the first half of 2026, according to its Hong Kong filing, without saying who bought them or what they do. About three quarters of Unitree's humanoid revenue in the first nine months of 2025 came from research and education buyers. The thousands that Hyundai, Schaeffler and Renault talk about are plans for 2027 and later.

Analysis based on customer releases and exchange filings (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Catalyst Brands, Schaeffler, Renault, Hyundai, GXO, Tesla, UBTech, Unitree), an earnings-call transcript (GXO), company posts (Figure, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind) and press reports, all retrieved November 11, 2026. AI assistance was used in research and drafting, and the piece was checked by a separate AI fact-check and AI editorial review. Servospace did not visit any site, interview the companies named, or see operating data. Calculations are Servospace arithmetic on published figures and are labeled as such.

In this analysis

• The short answer
• What kind of evidence each number is
• Customer by customer
• Units by as-of date
• Figure at BMW: 30,000 cars, no robot count
• Apptronik: Mercedes-Benz, GXO and a 96% proof of concept
• GXO: 45 pilots, zero in production
• UBTech and Unitree: sales volume is not factory work
• Own-use and plans: Foxconn, Tesla, Hyundai, Schaeffler, Renault
• Counterevidence and limits
• What a buyer or investor should ask for

The short answer

• Named tasks, no customer counts: Figure robots loaded sheet metal at BMW Spartanburg in 2025, and BMW said on June 25, 2026 that Figure 03 "will now start" parts sequencing there. Apptronik's Apollo has moved parts at Mercedes-Benz plants and, in a proof of concept, kitted brackets. BMW planned a pilot phase for Hexagon's AEON at Leipzig from summer 2026. UBTech robots are training in a materials-handling area at Dongfeng Liuzhou. Reflex and Apptronik robots have been piloted at GXO. Figure has a "commercial partnership" with Catalyst Brands at a Reno, Nevada distribution center.
• The only per-site counts are small and not from a customer document: fewer than ten Apollos at Mercedes-Benz (heise, March 2025), 11 Walker S1 robots in training at Dongfeng Liuzhou (People's Daily, April 2026) and "more than 10" humanoids for internal use at Foxconn's Texas sites (Reuters, October 2026).
• Big numbers that are not deployments: UBTech's 1,079 units sold in 2025 and 921 in the first half of 2026; Figure's "over 350" Figure 03s delivered from its own BotQ factory to internal teams, data collection, housework development and commercial use-case development, with no split given; Unitree's humanoid sales, mostly to research and education buyers as Unitree defines that group.
• Big numbers that are plans: 25,000 Atlas robots at Hyundai and Kia plants "over the next few years," per Boston Dynamics; Schaeffler's "at least one thousand" Hexagon robots within seven years; and Renault's 350 Wandercraft Calvin robots by the end of 2027.
• Not published by anyone here: a rate per robot, uptime, or how often a person has to step in, from a customer.

For Agility, whose SEC filings disclose humanoid revenue, customers and orders, see Agility's Digit at work. For how humanoids balance, see, and grip, see how humanoid robots work.

What kind of evidence each number is

Customer by customer

Sources: BMW June 2026 and February 2026 releases; Catalyst Brands; Mercedes-Benz and heise; Google DeepMind; Business Insider and The Robot Report on GXO; Schaeffler; Renault Group; Hyundai Motor Group and Boston Dynamics; People's Daily Online; Reuters via CNA; Tesla Q3 2026 update.

A pattern runs through the table: at least three of the customers have a financial stake in the maker or a shared investor. Mercedes-Benz made a "low double-digit-million-euro investment" in Apptronik. Renault took a stake in Wandercraft. Brookfield, the investment firm, holds "significant positions" in both Figure and Catalyst Brands, according to their joint release. That does not make the work less real, but it means these are not arm's-length purchases.

Units by as-of date

This is every robot count in the sources above, with the date it was true and what it counts.

Sources: as in the table above, plus UBTech's 2025 annual results and 2026 interim results, its November 2025 release, Figure's BMW results and factory ramp posts, and the GXO call transcript.

Only three rows count robots at a named place: fewer than ten at Mercedes-Benz in March 2025, 11 in training at Dongfeng Liuzhou, and more than ten for Foxconn's internal use. None comes from a customer document. Every larger number is a sale with an unknown destination, a factory output total, or a plan.

Figure at BMW: 30,000 cars, no robot count

Figure's November 2025 post is the most detailed account any humanoid maker has published from a car plant. It says Figure 02 ran a 10-hour shift Monday to Friday, loaded more than 90,000 sheet-metal parts onto a welding fixture, logged more than 1,250 hours of runtime and "contributed to the production of 30,000+ X3 vehicles." It also lists the targets: an 84-second cycle with 37 seconds to load, more than 99% of cycles with all three parts placed correctly, and zero human interventions per shift.

BMW's own release agrees on the 30,000 cars but uses different words. Ulrich Wieland, BMW Manufacturing's vice president of production control and logistics, said BMW had "successfully completed a pilot with Figure 02 in our body shop." Figure's chief executive, Brett Adcock, called it an "11-month deployment" in the same release; BMW's text says "over ten months." BMW refers to "the Figure 02 robot" in the singular. Figure says it "delivered robots to the plant." Neither gives a number.

Servospace arithmetic on those totals: 90,000+ parts at three parts per cycle is 30,000+ cycles, which lines up with 30,000+ cars. Spread over 1,250+ runtime hours, 30,000 cycles is 24 an hour, or one every 150 seconds on average, against the 84-second requirement. The post does not define runtime hours, so the gap could be idle time on the clock rather than slow cycles. The post also refers to "six months of daily runtime." Six months of 10-hour weekday shifts is about 1,300 hours, close to the 1,250+ reported. That is consistent with one robot position working one shift, but the post does not say how many robots shared it.

The 2026 phase is a different job. BMW says Figure 03 "will now start" picking unsorted parts out of large containers and sorting them into sequencing trolleys, which a tugger train or transport robot then takes to the line. Figure's June 30 post calls it "the first demonstration of Figure 03 performing a logistics workflow" there. BMW also has a separate humanoid project with Hexagon's AEON robot at Leipzig. BMW's February 2026 release said an initial test deployment took place in December 2025, a further test deployment was planned from April 2026, and a pilot phase would start in summer 2026. We found no later BMW statement confirming that the April test or the summer pilot ran.

Figure's other named customer is earlier still. In the Catalyst Brands release on the JCPenney newsroom, the robots "will first focus on aiding associates" with sequencing for the Reno center's sorting system, and "Catalyst Brands and Figure will identify the optimal use cases." Figure's own version of the same announcement says "We are seamlessly integrating into Catalyst's distribution facility."

Figure's factory numbers are not customer numbers either. Its April 2026 post says it had delivered "over 350" Figure 03s from its BotQ plant, and that those robots go to "internal research and development groups, data collection, efforts for robots to perform end-to-end housework, and commercial use-case development." Figure does not say how many went to each use. Our news desk covered Figure 03s walking out of BotQ in November; that clip also gave no count or destination.

Apptronik: Mercedes-Benz, GXO and a 96% proof of concept

Mercedes-Benz's March 2025 page is careful. It says Mercedes "is currently testing the integration of humanoid robots in production with an initial focus on repetitive tasks within intralogistics," with Apollo moving components to the line and doing initial quality checks. Workers taught the robots "using teleoperation processes and augmented reality," and the next step was "enabling Apollo's robots to perform autonomous operations." The page gives no count. heise reported the next day, on the same event, that fewer than ten Apollos had been working at Kecskemet and Berlin-Marienfelde.

The newest number is a success rate, not a count. On November 10, 2026, Google DeepMind said Apollo 2 robots running its Gemini Robotics 2.5 model kitted metal brackets into sequencing containers on active Mercedes-Benz lines in Kecskemet and Sindelfingen with a 96% success rate. DeepMind calls it a "proof-of-concept." It does not give the number of robots, picks, hours, or what counted as a failure. Our news story on the 96% covers the model side.

At GXO, Apptronik started with what GXO's June 2024 release called "an early-stage proof-of-concept program," evaluating Apollo "in a lab setting" before a U.S. distribution center "once ready." In April 2025 GXO told Business Insider it was still working out how to use Apollo for an undisclosed technology customer. Apptronik's June 30, 2026 release says Apollo 2 robots collect training data, through "a combination of teleoperation and autonomous execution," at "customers like Mercedes-Benz and GXO." The same release points to Apollo 3 as the next-generation product for "the upcoming commercial fleet." Apptronik has said it has a "large number of retail, manufacturing, and logistics customers" in its February 2026 funding release, without naming more than Mercedes-Benz, GXO and Jabil.

GXO: 45 pilots, zero in production

GXO has tested humanoids from several makers in its own warehouses, so its own words carry weight. In the published transcript of the August 5, 2026 call, Morgan Stanley's Ravi Shanker asked how many of the 20,000 robots GXO planned to deploy that year would be humanoids. Kelleher answered: "In production, 0 will be humanoids this year. We have a number of humanoids deployed in pilot. We've done 45 pilots on humanoids so far." He added: "We have not achieved ROI on humanoids yet," and said production was "probably 2 years away."

GXO's filings say less. Its fiscal 2025 annual report on Form 10-K mentions humanoids once, in a risk factor saying such investments "may not be successful" or "may not deliver the expected operational benefits." Text searches of that 10-K and of its third-quarter 2026 10-Q found no mention of Agility, Apptronik or Reflex as of November 11, 2026. That absence is not proof of anything except size: humanoids are not yet material to GXO's numbers.

The Reflex pilot shows what those pilots look like. GXO told The Robot Report in September 2024 that it was exploring Reflex's wheeled robot for removing empty cartons, and that the robots "still require remote operation by employees." By April 2025, a Reflex robot was carrying empty cardboard from a Locus Robotics robot to a recycling machine at a sports apparel customer's site, GXO told Business Insider.

GXO's largest humanoid program is with Agility, which GXO says will expand Digit to two more U.S. sites from early 2027. Agility's Digit at work treats the Digit work at GXO's Flowery Branch, Georgia, site as live under a multi-year robots-as-a-service agreement. GXO did not say on the call whether that work counts as "production" in Kelleher's sense, and we leave that tension open.

UBTech and Unitree: sales volume is not factory work

UBTech has the biggest audited humanoid numbers. Its 2025 annual results report about RMB820 million of revenue from full-size humanoid products and services and 1,079 units sold. Its unaudited first-half 2026 results report RMB590.3 million and 921 units. Servospace arithmetic: that is about RMB760,000 per unit in 2025 and RMB641,000 in the first half of 2026, with services included, so it is not a robot price.

The filings do not say who bought the robots or where they work. The interim report says UBTech has "carried out solution validation" for material handling, sheet-metal loading, express sorting and palletizing, and it lists teleoperation among its methods. One unnamed customer accounted for RMB308.5 million, 24% of UBTech's total revenue in the half. The filing does not say which business that customer bought from.

UBTech's November 2025 release says it "collaborates with" BYD, Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor, Geely, FAW-Volkswagen Qingdao, Audi FAW, BAIC New Energy, Foxconn and SF Express. That is UBTech's statement. Our searches found no statement from those companies giving their own Walker robot count. The nearest is a People's Daily report from April 2026: 11 Walker S1 robots practicing moving bins, sorting parts and collecting empty containers in a 200-square-meter training area at a Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor factory, "before eventually joining regular production lines." The paper described the robots as still "apprentices" and quoted the plant's general manager, Lin Changbo, on the efficiency and cost gains he expects. The same report says 120 humanoid robots train at a Liuzhou data collection and testing center. UBTech's November release called a RMB159 million order "to deploy Walker S2 robots at a data collection center in Zigong" the second-largest of the year, after a RMB250 million September order it did not describe. A 36Kr tally from late November 2025 counted three data-collection and training or testing center wins that month totaling RMB566 million, out of about RMB1.3 billion of Walker orders for the year. Servospace arithmetic: that is about 44% of 36Kr's tally, which is a press count, not a filing. The rest is not all production-line work either; 36Kr also lists orders tied to border ports, patrols, car-factory work and reception.

Unitree's numbers show the same split. In a reply to the Shanghai exchange filed in March 2026, it broke down humanoid revenue for January to September 2025: 73.60% from research and education (which it defines to include tech companies and developers buying for research), 17.39% from commercial and consumer uses, and 9.01% from industry. Within industry, enterprise showroom tours were "about 50-70%," with smart manufacturing and inspection making up the rest. Servospace arithmetic: manufacturing and inspection together were about 2.7% to 4.5% of Unitree's humanoid revenue. Unitree's filing says large-scale industrial use "is in the development and training stage." Our story on Unitree's first results as a listed company has its latest revenue.

Own-use and plans: Foxconn, Tesla, Hyundai, Schaeffler, Renault

Foxconn. Brand Cheng, chairman of Foxconn Industrial Internet, told Reuters on October 30, 2026 that "more than 10 humanoid robots had been deployed at its Texas facilities for internal use" (via CNA). The report does not say whose robots they are or what they do. Foxconn's unit introduced two wheeled models in October and is developing humanoid AI models on NVIDIA's GR00T, so the Texas count is best read as internal use, not a customer sale. Our Foxconn story has the detail.

Tesla. Tesla's third-quarter 2026 update lists Optimus in California as "Early Ramp" and says "Optimus production began in Fremont on our high-volume lines." That is robot manufacturing, not a count of Optimus doing factory work. Its 10-Q names Optimus among the drivers of higher research spending. Neither gives a count of robots doing work in Tesla's factories. Elon Musk's comments on renting Optimus are claims, not terms, as our story notes.

Hyundai and Boston Dynamics. Hyundai Motor Group said at CES 2026 that Atlas will start on processes "such as parts sequencing" at its Georgia Metaplant from 2028 and move to component assembly by 2030. Boston Dynamics opened a training center inside the Metaplant in September 2026 and said the plan begins "with 25,000 units at Hyundai Motor and Kia's global plants over the next few years" (Boston Dynamics). Today the robots are training, not producing.

Schaeffler. In April 2026, Schaeffler said it is "planning to deploy at least one thousand humanoid robots from Hexagon Robotics in its global production system within the next seven years" (Schaeffler). The same deal makes Schaeffler a supplier of actuators to Hexagon, and the release carries a forward-looking statements warning. Schaeffler's current humanoid count, three Agility Digits in U.S. plants, is in the Agility guide.

Renault. Renault Group says Wandercraft's Calvin is "currently being tested at Douai," lifting tires two at a time, about 30 kilos, with "around ten robots in place by end of 2026, then 350 in French and Spanish factories by end of 2027" (Renault Group). Renault is an investor in Wandercraft.

Own-plant results from China follow the same pattern. Xiaomi says one humanoid ran an eight-hour task at a station in its car factory (our story), a maker reporting on its own plant.

Counterevidence and limits

• Counts may exist privately. BMW, Mercedes-Benz and GXO may know exactly how many robots they run and choose not to say. Silence on a count is not evidence that the count is one.
• "Fewer than ten" is old and second-hand. It comes from March 2025 press reporting of a Mercedes-Benz event, not a Mercedes-Benz document, and the number may have changed.
• One GXO transcript. The 45-pilot quote is from the Motley Fool transcript; a second page we found carries the same text and is not an independent transcription. We quote it as published.
• UBTech's buyers are not all unknown. Some of its 921 units may well work in factories, and UBTech describes industrial uses. The filings just do not say how many, and training at a car plant is not the same as paid production.
• The Figure arithmetic is about consistency, not speed. The 150-second average uses undefined runtime hours. It shows the published totals do not answer the cycle-time question; it does not show the robot missed its target.
• Chinese makers are under-covered here. AgiBot, Leju, Kepler, X-Humanoid and others publish customer claims mostly in Chinese-language vendor releases. We left out claims we could not tie to a customer document or a filing.
• No ROI or price claims. None of the customers here has published a cost, and nothing in this guide turns order values into a robot price.

What a buyer or investor should ask for

A humanoid deployment claim becomes evidence when it carries these fields. Every row in the customer table is missing at least two.

The next checkpoints are GXO's fourth-quarter results, any BMW or Mercedes-Benz count for Figure 03 or Apollo, UBTech's 2026 annual results in Hong Kong, Renault's end-2026 Calvin count, and Hyundai's 2028 start date. This guide will be reviewed when one of those is published, or within 90 days. More coverage is on our humanoid robots topic page.

How the sources were used

Customer releases are treated as the customer's statements, including quotes from vendor executives inside them. Vendor posts and releases are treated as vendor claims. UBTech's and Unitree's exchange documents are used for sales and revenue facts. The GXO quotes are from one published transcript. Pages that blocked our direct download (Mercedes-Benz, Schaeffler, GXO's June 2024 release) were read through a fetch or search tool and only their quoted text is used. Absence findings ("no mention of Apptronik") come from text searches of the GXO filings named and of SEC full-text search, as of November 11, 2026. Press reports are labeled where used. Calculations are simple divisions and multiplications of published figures, labeled as Servospace arithmetic. Corrections can be sent through Servospace's contact page.