Agile Robots

Agile Robots was founded in Munich in 2018 by Zhaopeng Chen and Peter Meusel together with eight colleagues from the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics. Its first product was Diana 7, a torque-controlled seven-axis arm from 2019, followed by the Thor arms, the Agile Hand, mobile robots and the AgileCore software layer. The company lists sites in Germany (Munich, Kaufbeuren, Gemmingen), Palo Alto, four Chinese cities and two Indian cities, and bought the voice-AI firm audEERING in 2025 and India's XNG Automation in 2026.

SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a Series C in September 2021, reported at USD 220 million, which made Agile Robots the first German robotics company valued above USD 1 billion. Hillhouse and Sequoia China also invested. In June 2026 Bloomberg reported that SoftBank was in early talks to put more than USD 300 million into a new round of about USD 800 million; neither side confirmed it. The same report put headcount above 3,200 across Germany, China and India.

The Agile ONE humanoid is a late addition to an arm-and-AMR business. The company's own timeline dates its announcement to November 2025, with mass production planned at a Bavarian factory for early 2026. No customer deployments or unit numbers have been published, and the humanoid remains a small part of what the company actually sells.