The robot company betting its IPO on legs is exploring wheels too
Agility Robotics has built its entire public pitch on legged humanoids. Its co-founder just confirmed the company is exploring wheels too, with no product, timeline, or explanation yet attached.
Agility Robotics confirmed to The Robot Report that it is exploring wheeled robots, a new direction for a company that has spent a decade building its identity, and its pitch to public markets, around bipedal humanoids.
The confirmation followed a detail buried at the end of the launch video for Digit V5, Agility’s newest humanoid: a brief shot of a robot on wheels.
Asked about it directly, co-founder and chief robot officer Jonathan Hurst told the outlet in an email interview, “We’re exploring a range of robot designs and form factors, including wheels, to address different operating environments and customer needs.”
The confirmation came from Hurst, not from chief executive Peggy Johnson, and it stopped well short of a product announcement. Agility has not said whether a wheeled machine would carry the Digit name, retain a humanoid torso and arms, or be built for a different customer base entirely.
Wheels are a familiar hedge in industrial robotics: they are cheaper to engineer, easier to certify, and often faster across the flat, structured aisles of a warehouse than legs designed to also climb stairs and step over pallets.
Hurst has spent decades of his academic career, first at Oregon State University, arguing that legs matter because they go places wheels cannot. Asked what a wheeled Agility robot would look like or when it might exist, he gave the company’s clearest answer yet on its own timeline.
Too early to say! I have guesses and inclinations, but really we’re just starting.
Jonathan Hurst, Agility Robotics co-founder and chief robot officer, to The Robot Report
The hedge lands as Agility prepares to go public through a $2.5 billion SPAC merger with Churchill Capital Corp. XI, expected to raise more than $620 million including a $200 million investment led by Foxconn, according to TechCrunch’s coverage of the deal.
Agility’s own S-4 filing with the SEC, reported by The Robot Report on 7 September 2026, shows why a hedge might matter to investors: $1.8 million in net sales in 2025 against a $140 million operating loss, with operating expenses rising from $71 million in 2024 to $111 million in 2025 and roughly $100 million in cash burned over the year.
The company’s case for its valuation rests on Digit, the legged humanoid: more than 65,000 logged operating hours across nine customer sites, including Amazon, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, GXO and Mercado Libre, and over $300 million in multi-year orders, largely from a single robots-as-a-service customer, with Digit V5 due to ship to its first customers in December, according to Interesting Engineering’s coverage of the V5 launch.
Hurst’s quote is not a line item in the SEC filing asking investors to price Agility at $2.5 billion on the strength of its legged robot, and “too early to say” is as far as the company will commit on paper.
Johnson has separately said humanoids reaching ordinary homes is “10-plus years” away because houses are “chaotic, with dogs, babies, visitors, and objects left in unexpected places,” a comment about consumer robots rather than warehouses, but a sign that Agility’s own leadership already treats legs as suited to some environments and not others.
Whether wheels become the next Agility product, a shelved idea from one launch video, or something built for a customer the company has not named is what remains unknown outside that one exchange.
