By Hamza Faisal
Munich-based Agile Robots has closed a $500 million Series F funding round at an $8.5 billion valuation, one of the largest cheques ever written for a European robotics company — and a clear signal that investors now see humanoid robots as factory equipment, not science fiction.
The round was led by SoftBank Group, with Nvidia, Hitachi Group — including Hitachi Ventures — and T.Capital also participating. The company said the new money takes its total invested capital to $2 billion since it was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the German Aerospace Center.
Agile Robots describes its field as "physical AI": humanoid and mobile robots, robotic arms and dexterous hands, and the software and AI models that control them. Its full-size industrial humanoid, Agile ONE, was publicly unveiled in November 2025, and the company says it already has more than 20,000 robotic solutions installed with customers worldwide.
Factories first, not living rooms
Unlike the consumer-facing humanoids that dominate headlines, Agile's pitch is resolutely industrial. Its robots are built to automate tasks on production lines that have traditionally relied on human dexterity and judgment — picking, handling and assembling parts alongside human workers.
The new funding will pay for expansion into the United States, more production capacity — including in Germany — and entry into new markets. Agile opened a production facility in Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich, earlier this year that is designed to manufacture up to 10,000 legged and wheeled humanoid robots a year, and it plans to hire more engineers and accelerate development of new robotics applications.
The company has not published audited revenue figures, but it says revenue has roughly doubled every year since founding, reaching about €200 million in 2024. An unofficial estimate cited by Tech Funding News puts 2025 revenue at around $339 million, with guidance of $690 million for 2026.
SoftBank doubles down despite a bruising quarter
SoftBank is a returning backer: its Vision Fund 2 led Agile's $220 million Series C in 2021, a round that made the company Germany's first robotics unicorn. Bloomberg reported in June that SoftBank was considering a round of as much as $800 million, so the final $500 million is somewhat smaller — but it still lands at a valuation roughly eight times the 2021 figure.
The commitment is striking given SoftBank's own numbers. The conglomerate reported a net loss of 1.12 trillion yen for the July–September quarter of 2026, reversing a 2.5 trillion yen profit a year earlier, as financing costs from its AI build-out more than doubled. Even so, it is still writing some of the biggest cheques in robotics.
Nvidia's participation is equally telling. The chipmaker is both an investor and a technology partner, and its hardware and AI models sit at the heart of the humanoid push.
Europe's most valuable robotics startup
At $8.5 billion, Agile Robots is now Europe's most valuable robotics startup, and one of the most valuable in the world. Chief executive Zhaopeng Chen has floated the idea of a stock market listing further down the line, though no timetable has been given.
The round also underlines how fast physical AI has moved from research labs to balance sheets. In the same week, investors poured billions into AI hardware, defence robotics and industrial automation — but few rounds carry as direct a message as this one: the factory of the next decade, the backers believe, will have robots that walk.
Whether Agile can convert a $500 million war chest and a 10,000-unit-a-year factory into paying customers at scale is the question that will decide if the valuation holds.
