Agility Robotics’ humanoid robot has its first real job – in a Spanx factory

“The knees hinder picking up objects,” she explained Assets Technology reporter Jason Del Rey identified that Digit was designed to be used in large warehouses to lift and set things down.

Now Digit can put its decade-long backward knees design to good use: The droid was recently hired for its first real job – picking up tote bags and placing them on conveyor belts at a Spanx factory in Connecticut. The work is an element of a multi-year contract with logistics provider GXO Logistics, and Johnson said the corporate is already generating monthly revenue from the robot-as-a-service project.

Johnson, who has been CEO for just 4 months, said there are about 1.1 million unfilled warehouse jobs within the U.S. that require the repetitive, mundane tasks Digit does. “Nobody wants those jobs,” she said, adding that the repeated lifting of heavy weights causes employees to injure themselves and eventually quit their warehouse jobs. “That’s where the injuries come from. That’s where the turnover comes from,” she said. Warehouse employees who once did physical labor are actually becoming managers of the robots, she added. “They need to be upskilled.”

Agility Robotics, which grew out of research at Oregon State University, raised $150 million in a Series C funding round in April 2024 to arrange for Digit’s deployment in logistics and warehouse environments. Now that Digit has been released into the warehouse environment, Johnson said the corporate is working on launching the following generation of Digit, which is about to reach in the autumn. Thanks to a factory the corporate recently inbuilt Salem, Oregon, the corporate will roll out a whole bunch of Digit robots, with hundreds planned for next 12 months — with a goal of 10,000 to satisfy growing demand.

But it isn’t nearly letting the robots walk – knees back and all, Johnson stressed. Rather, it’s about allowing the robot to enter an organization’s existing workflow. “We need to get into the companies’ IT infrastructure and make it usable for them,” she said.

In April 2024, Agility Robotics confirmed that it had laid off a “small number” of employees because there have been “ongoing efforts to position the company for success” while Digit ramped up production. Johnson said the corporate is currently raising capital for one more round of financing.

But at once, she says, she’s attempting to determine what workplace could be best for the few Digit robots currently available. “We’ve had a lot of interest from the automotive industry and the grocery retail industry,” she says. “I’m trying to figure out which direction we should go.”