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Funding

Agile Robots raises $500 million at an $8.5 billion valuation in a round led by SoftBank Group, with Nvidia, Hitachi and T.Capital

Blue and white Agile Robots robot arms on an automated assembly line, from the company's September 2026 blog about its humanoid factory
Image: Agile Robots

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Agile Robots, the Munich robot maker founded in 2018 by CEO Zhaopeng Chen, has raised $500 million, about €450 million, at an $8.5 billion valuation, dpa, Handelsblatt and Bloomberg reported on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. SoftBank Group led the round. Nvidia, Hitachi through its investment arm, and T.Capital, Deutsche Telekom's investment arm, also put in money. Handelsblatt and dpa put total funding since 2018 at about $2 billion.

Source: Handelsblatt: Agile Robots jetzt mit 8,5 Milliarden Dollar bewertet, interview with CEO Zhaopeng Chen (Nov. 12, 2026, German)

Chen told Handelsblatt, in German, "We are now the most valuable robotics company in Europe," a claim that rests on private valuations, and said the next factory will probably be built in the U.S. The plant in Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich, opened early this year, is designed for up to 10,000 humanoid robots a year. Chen would not say how many have been delivered to customers. "We will start mass production of the Agile ONE next year," he said.

Servospace take: $8.5 billion, no revenue figure, no delivery count, and a smaller check

Servospace analysis: investors are paying for a factory story the company has not yet backed with delivery or revenue numbers. Agile Robots does not disclose revenue or earnings, Trending Topics noted, and Chen declined to give a delivery count. The $8.5 billion is about 4.25 times the roughly $2 billion raised since 2018, by Servospace math. If $8.5 billion is the post-money value, which the reports do not say, the new $500 million bought about 5.9% of the company.

The round also shrank. Bloomberg reported on June 2 that Agile Robots was in early talks to raise about $800 million, and Humanoids Daily, citing that report, said SoftBank was discussing more than $300 million of it. The final $500 million is 37.5% smaller. Why was not disclosed.

Read the factory claims closely. Agile Robots' own September blog says Fürstenfeldbruck began production in January, reached series production by late summer, takes three to four days to build one robot, and that most of what ships today is wheeled, because no European or North American framework yet certifies bipedal humanoids working next to people. Chen now says Agile ONE mass production starts next year, with a goal of tripling capacity.

Who makes money: two of the new investors also sell into the product. The Agile ONE SN research humanoid launched in October is built on Nvidia's Isaac GR00T platform (Servospace covered GR00T 2 on Nov. 9), and Hitachi agreed in September to put its edge AI chips in Agile Robots' robots and to sell joint products through its HMAX Industry portfolio. SoftBank is doubling down: its Vision Fund 2 led a $220 million Series C in 2021 that valued the company above $1 billion. The new valuation is about $1.5 billion above the roughly $7 billion Handelsblatt cites for Neura Robotics after its summer raise of up to $1.4 billion (Servospace has a Nov. 5 Neura grid-robot story, different event). Trending Topics, citing The New York Times, said the round also prepares for a possible IPO, with no timetable.

More on Nvidia and robot business and funding.

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Summarized by Servospace from the sources above, drafted with AI help and checked against those sources before publishing. Claims are the companies' or outlets' unless we say otherwise. How we work.

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