Salem's Agility Robotics starts trading on Nasdaq as AGLT after a volatile debut (Nov. 8)

Phil Harpster

7 hours ago

5 min read

Two-legged Cassie walking robot striding along a forest trail beside a researcher — Cassie, a two-legged walking robot built at Oregon State University, walks in the OSU Research Forest with Mikhail Jones in 2017. Cassie was an early product of Agility Robotics, the OSU spinoff now headquartered in Salem. Photo: Oregon State University / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Quick Read

Salem-based Agility Robotics, maker of the Digit humanoid robot, began trading on Nasdaq on Thursday, Nov. 5, under the ticker AGLT, with warrants trading as AGLTW.
The company went public by merging with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a blank-check company, in a deal it says raised about $465 million in gross capital before expenses.
AGLT swung from a low of $8.40 to close at $11.51 on its first day, then fell about 14% Friday to close at $9.90.
Agility builds Digit at RoboFab, its 70,000-square-foot factory at 4698 Truax Drive SE, which the company says is designed to make up to 10,000 robots a year.

By Phil Harpster. Edited by Channing Webb.

SALEM, Ore. - A robot company that builds its machines in southeast Salem is now a publicly traded stock.

Agility Robotics, headquartered in Salem and best known for its two-legged Digit humanoid, began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Thursday, Nov. 5. Its common stock trades as AGLT and its warrants as AGLTW, the company said in a Nov. 5 news release. Agility calls itself the first U.S. publicly listed pure-play humanoid robotics company with active commercial deployments.

The listing follows Agility's merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Churchill XI shareholders approved the deal on Nov. 2 with more than 84% of votes cast in favor, and it closed Nov. 4, The Robot Report reported.

The Salem factory behind the stock

Agility assembles Digit at RoboFab, a 70,000-square-foot plant at 4698 Truax Drive SE, near other industrial sites in southeast Salem. The company announced the factory in September 2023 and billed it as the world's first factory for humanoid robots. In its release, Agility says RoboFab is designed for annual production capacity of up to 10,000 robots. Its own forward-looking statements list reaching that capacity as a risk, not a certainty.

Agility employs about 500 people, 175 of them at the Salem factory, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. The company also has a hardware and physical AI facility in Fremont, California, and recently announced a 50,000-square-foot expansion in Pittsburgh focused on software, AI, deployment and customer support.

Agility spun out of Oregon State University's robotics lab in 2015. Co-founder Jonathan Hurst, the company's chief robot officer, still serves on OSU's engineering faculty, according to The Oregonian. "We have a lot of engineering to continue to do and a thousand ideas of how to improve things," Hurst told the paper. "We just need to have that opportunity to continue doing it."

A volatile first week on Nasdaq

AGLT had a bumpy start. On Thursday, the stock traded as low as $8.40 and as high as $12.15 before closing at $11.51, according to Yahoo Finance market data. That close was about 2% above the $11.26 final close of Churchill XI's shares the day before and above the $10 per share price used in the SPAC deal. The Oregonian reported the same $8.40 low and $11.51 close.

On Friday, Nov. 6, AGLT fell about 14% to close at $9.90, below the $10 deal price, after trading between $8.80 and $11.58. The warrants, AGLTW, closed Friday at $4.12. Markets were closed for the weekend, so Friday's prices are the latest.

This story is not investment advice. SPAC listings can swing sharply in their first days of trading.

What the deal raised and what Agility says it has

Agility said the merger and related financings brought in about $465 million in gross capital before transaction expenses, including a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, led by Foxconn and $100 million in equity funding received before closing. The Robot Report broke that down as about $164 million from Churchill XI's trust account after shareholder redemptions, $201 million from the Foxconn-led PIPE and the $100 million round. Agility had projected more than $620 million if no shareholders redeemed, as we reported in October.

The company says it has more than $300 million in committed multi-year orders for Digit 5, its next-generation humanoid, subject to contractual milestones, product features and specifications. Semafor reported that those orders come from a single undisclosed customer and that the merger valued Agility at about $2.5 billion. The Oregonian put Agility's market value at around $2 billion on its first trading day.

Agility says Digit has logged more than 65,000 hours of operation over nearly three years of real-world deployments, with customers including GXO, Schaeffler and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. Digit 5, unveiled in September, is designed to lift up to 50 pounds repeatedly and work closer to people. Early customer access is expected in the first half of 2027, with general availability targeted for the end of 2027.

Revenue is still small. Agility reported $1.78 million in revenue in 2025, up from $310,000 in 2024, according to The Robot Report.

"Today marks an important milestone for Agility, but the bigger story is what it means for the future of work," CEO Peggy Johnson said in the release. "Becoming a public company gives us access to more resources to help accelerate that progress, bring intelligent robots to more workplaces and help build a future where people and robots accomplish more together."

The bigger humanoid race

Agility enters public markets as Tesla and other companies promote humanoid robots, and as China's humanoid sector grows. Semafor noted that China's Unitree listed in Shanghai in August and has since seen its value fall as investors question whether demand matches the hype. "Challenging market out there, but we're well capitalized," Johnson told Semafor.

Agility says the proceeds will help it fill customer orders, expand deployments, scale Digit production and keep developing its robotics and AI platform. For Salem, the listing puts a hometown manufacturer on a national stock exchange, with its factory jobs on Truax Drive tied to how fast those robots ship.

We first covered Agility's road to Nasdaq in our Oct. 14 story on CES 2027 and Agility's Nasdaq plans.