Issue #5 · November 2, 2026 · Covers Oct 25 to Nov 1, 2026

Agility heads to Nasdaq with $465M, Bedrock raises $600M, and AI labs point robots at data centers

Agility is set to go public this week with about $465M, Bedrock's $600M round led $1.2B in disclosed robotics raises, and the AI labs spent the week on robots that build data centers and simulated worlds that train them.

The week at a glance

Agility: the SPAC vote is today, Nov 2, closing is expected Nov 4 and Nasdaq trading as AGLT from Nov 5, with an expected gross raise of about $465M. GXO, a contract logistics company that already uses Digit, is adding two more US sites from early 2027. ¹
Funding: Bedrock ($600M Series C at $4.1B), Foundry Robotics ($100M), Machenta ($40M) and Bleu Robotics (€5M, about $6M). The $1.2B total also counts Agility's expected raise of about $465M. Crunchbase counts $9.9B of robotics venture funding in Q3. ⁷
Physical Intelligence: Bloomberg reports talks to raise at least $1B at about $20B, up from $11.5B earlier this year. ¹⁴
AI labs: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says its robotics program will be pointed at "making lots of data centers," Gemini Robotics ER 2 reached Google Cloud, and DeepMind's Genie 4 world model shows Apptronik's Apollo in simulation. ¹⁷
Meta: The Information reports a prototype humanoid called Max, built with China's Fourier in about three months. ²²
China: Unitree's Q3 revenue rose 70% in its first report since listing, and AGIBOT proposed "Worken" as a unit of robot work. ²⁵
Filings: Figure published three patent applications on Oct 29 covering an action model and a VR rig for collecting humanoid training data. ²⁷

Companies in this issue

1. Humanoids: Agility's listing week

Agility's listing week: about $465M, a Nov 2 vote and AGLT from Nov 5

The money (Oct 30): Agility and Churchill Capital Corp XI expect a gross raise of about $465M: about $164M left in the SPAC trust, a $201M PIPE at $10 a share led by Foxconn, and $100M Agility has already received. Churchill XI's shareholder meeting is today, Nov 2, closing is expected Nov 4, and trading on Nasdaq as "AGLT" is expected from Nov 5. ¹
GXO expands (Oct 26): GXO, a contract logistics company and an existing Agility customer, will deploy Digit at two more US facilities, in Statesville, North Carolina and Lebanon, Tennessee, starting in early 2027 on Digit 4 and moving to Digit 5 when it is available. Agility says Digit has moved more than 100,000 totes at GXO's Georgia site since June 2024. ²³
Customers it won't name: Agility says three more manufacturers are in paid programs (a global automaker that sells more than three million vehicles a year, a large automotive parts maker and a consumer products company) and that it has a pipeline of more than 30 prospects, including two early-stage potential subcontractor deals for a branch of the US Armed Services, with no agreements signed.
The fine print: Agility repeats that its more than $300M in Digit 5 orders is "subject to satisfaction of contractual milestones, product features and specifications, and does not represent current-period revenue." Early access to Digit 5 is planned for the first half of 2027, with general availability targeted for the end of 2027. ⁴

Why it matters: If the deal closes on schedule, Agility will report as a public company, and its quarterly filings will give the market a rare public benchmark for humanoid revenue and unit counts. Foxconn leading the PIPE ties Agility to a contract manufacturer that can build at scale. SPAC shareholders can ask for their money back instead of becoming Agility shareholders. After those requests, about $164M is left in the SPAC's trust account, and shareholders can still withdraw a request until today's vote, so the final count after the vote will show exactly how much of that cash goes to Agility.

Founders on the record

Rhoda AI, a Palo Alto startup building a robot AI model pre-trained on internet video: CEO Jagdeep Singh said "our target is to be in production before the end of this year." He described its customers as a German automotive OEM and a tier-one automotive supplier. ⁵
XPeng, the Chinese electric-car maker whose robotics unit builds the IRON humanoid: President Brian Gu said "by the end of this year, uh we plan to have production of uh you know hundreds, uh if not thousands, uh robots that can be utilized in our stores to be sales agent". ⁶

2. Funding: $1.2B disclosed, led by Bedrock's $600M

Disclosed raises this week add up to about $1.2B: Bedrock's $600M, Agility's expected raise of about $465M from its SPAC listing (see above), Foundry's $100M and Machenta's $40M.

Bar chart of four robotics raises disclosed Oct 26 to 30, 2026, totaling about 1.2 billion dollars: Bedrock Robotics 600 million Series C at a 4.1 billion dollar post-money valuation, Agility Robotics about 465 million expected gross raise at SPAC close (hatched), Foundry Robotics 100 million Series A, Machenta 40 million seed — Disclosed USD amounts. Agility's figure is the expected gross raise at its SPAC close, not a priced venture round. Bleu Robotics' €5M (about $6M) pre-seed is not shown. Sources: GlobeNewswire (Bedrock, Agility), Business Wire (Foundry) and TechFundingNews (Machenta), linked below. Chart by AI & Humanoid Robotics Weekly.

Bedrock Robotics (autonomous excavators) raised a $600M Series C at a $4.1B post-money valuation, co-led by CapitalG and Emergence, with new investors USIT, Bessemer and Temasek and existing backers including 8VC, Eclipse and NVIDIA. Total funding is nearly $1B. Its Series B in February reportedly valued it at $1.75B. Bedrock says it moved to fully autonomous paid work in mid-August and named new customers including Haydon (Texas), Wagner, C.W. Matthews and ArchKey. ⁷⁸ CEO Boris Sofman said "we're on with four customers now and four sites" and that Bedrock retrofits "$600,000 machines" with its sensors and compute in "a handful of hours." ⁹
Foundry Robotics (Emeryville) raised a $100M Series A led by Marlinspike, with Khosla, Wing VC, SE Ventures and others. It sells robotic assembly as a service and is moving into a 130,000 sq ft facility, which it says is twenty times its earlier footprint. ¹⁰
Machenta (London, founded 2025, 11 people) raised a $40M seed co-led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures. Led by CEO Edward Johns of Imperial College, it trains robots entirely in simulation, and it says they learn new tasks from one or two demonstrations. It is research-stage with no near-term commercial plans. ¹¹
Bleu Robotics (Paris) raised a €5M (about $6M) pre-seed co-led by Contrarian Ventures and OVNI Capital for software that it says lets humanoids learn a factory task from as few as ten operator demonstrations. ¹²
The quarter: Crunchbase counts $9.9B of global robotics venture funding in Q3 2026, up from $4.3B a year earlier. Year to date, China leads with $13.2B, ahead of the US at $12.1B, and 45 of about 75 robotics unicorns joined the list this year. ¹³

Physical Intelligence is reportedly in talks to raise at least $1B at a valuation of about $20B

Physical Intelligence is in talks to raise at least $1B at a valuation of about $20B, with Avenir and Lux in talks to lead, Bloomberg reported on Oct 27, citing people familiar. That would be up from $11.5B earlier this year, and Bloomberg's sources say it has no revenue yet. Physical Intelligence hasn't commented. ¹⁴¹⁵

Why it matters: The money is going to robots that already earn revenue in one job (digging, assembly, warehouse totes) and to labs that promise a general model. Bedrock more than doubled its valuation in about eight months with four customer sites; Machenta and Bleu are betting that few-demonstration learning beats collecting huge datasets. Investors now price proof of revenue.

3. AI labs: OpenAI points robots at data centers, Google opens ER 2 and Genie 4

OpenAI (Oct 29): on Stripe's Cheeky Pint podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said: "We have a robotics program that we're going to point at making lots of data centers." He added: "There's very little, relatively little talk about like self -replicating data centers." And: "I think we have that like within grasp." TNW says he tied it to "a lot of really cheap compute". Altman gave no timeline, budget or robot details. ¹⁶¹⁷
Gemini Robotics ER 2 on Google Cloud (Oct 27): Google Cloud made the embodied-reasoning model available in public preview in Model Garden, announced in a post by Carolina Parada, VP and Head of DeepMind Robotics, and Adrian Jones. ER 2 first launched on Jul 30 on the Gemini API and AI Studio, so this is wider access for businesses, not a new model. Arm's Barrie Mullins, Senior Director, Arm Total Design for Physical AI, said Arm is "excited to be working with Google on exploring how these emerging capabilities can shape the next generation of robotics compute platforms." ¹⁸¹⁹
Genie 4 (Oct 27): Google DeepMind's new real-time interactive world model, with native audio, is rolling out "as a research preview for trusted testers," and is coming to Google AI Ultra subscribers in Project Genie and to early-access Gemini API and AI Studio partners through a waitlist. DeepMind says it helps with "developing training environments for robots and agents," and its post shows "Gemini 4 Argon and Genie 4 work together to simulate Apptronik's Apollo humanoid playing a game of checkers, breaking the task down into real-time steps." DeepMind lists limits: drift over longer runs, only a few minutes of interaction, and audio and text accuracy still in research. ²⁰²¹

Meta's "Max" humanoid, built with Fourier

Meta built a prototype humanoid called Max with Shanghai's Fourier in about three months and is working on a second version, The Information reported on Oct 31. Per the report, Max weighs about 48 kg, stands about 1.5 m, runs on NVIDIA Jetson Thor, and has five-fingered hands and a face screen. It was shown to staff at an internal summit in late August, and Meta sees humanoids as a body for its Muse models. Meta told The Information the work is for internal research and it has no plans to sell the units. Reuters said it could not verify the report. ²²²³
From the filings: a Meta patent application published Oct 29 (US20260336100A1, "Force sensing and birefringent imaging") covers a touch sensor that images a deformable layer with a polarization camera. ²⁴

Why it matters: Three of the biggest AI labs now describe robots as part of their core plans: OpenAI wants robots that build its data centers, Google is selling robot reasoning and simulation as cloud services, and Meta reportedly has hardware built with a Chinese humanoid maker. Google's checkers demo with Apollo shows where this is heading: training in generated worlds instead of real ones, which cuts data costs. A Meta humanoid built with Fourier also raises a supply-chain question for US buyers, after the FCC curbs on new foreign-made robots covered in Issue #4.

4. China: Unitree's first report as a public company and AGIBOT's new metric

Unitree (Oct 28): in its first quarterly report since listing, Unitree's Q3 revenue rose 69.93% to 665.04M yuan, net profit fell 17.37% to 112.69M yuan, and R&D spending rose 249.58% to 127M yuan. Nine-month revenue was 1.817B yuan, up 55.71%. The same report cites data showing China's physical-AI investment fell 40.1% in September, to 11.6B yuan. ²⁵
AGIBOT Innovation Day (Oct 29): AGIBOT proposed Worken, a measure of robot output defined as active robots × autonomous hours × an output-efficiency ratio. It also showed the G2 Max (21 DOF, 40 kg payload dual-arm robot) and a GO-3 Preview model, which AGIBOT says ranks first on the RoboDojo, RoboTwin and RoboColiseum benchmarks. AGIBOT says its Link-U OS 1.0 will be fully open source by the end of 2026 and donated to the OpenAtom Foundation, and that it built its 20,000th robot in September. ²⁶

A presenter on stage at AGIBOT Innovation Day 2026 in front of a screen titled Worken, Redefining Machine Value, showing Worken counts for production-line loading, metro security screening, entertainment performances and retail shopping guides — AGIBOT introduces Worken at its Innovation Day. Photo: AGIBOT via PR Newswire.

Why it matters: Unitree's report shows a Chinese humanoid maker growing revenue about 70% and more than tripling R&D while profit fell. AGIBOT's Worken is an attempt to sell robots by the work they do rather than by unit, the same shift Formic and Foundry are making with robots-as-a-service in the US. AGIBOT is donating its Link-U OS to China's OpenAtom Foundation and says the two will promote unified technical interfaces and standards for humanoids. If Chinese parts makers build to one shared interface, their motors, hands and sensors could plug into robots with less custom integration work, which matters if you buy parts from them.

5. Filings: Figure patents its humanoid data-collection rig

Figure published three US patent applications on Oct 29: an "Action model for a robot" (US20260339331A1) for a humanoid with at least 30 degrees of freedom; a "Humanoid robot data collection system having virtual reality displays" (US20260339321A1), a wearable back-harness rig; and "Meta-control techniques" for the same system (US20260336123A1), using voice, gaze and foot pedals. It also published a head-and-neck application on Oct 22 and was granted an exterior-covering patent on Oct 20. ²⁷
Generalist AI filed a US trademark application on Oct 26 (serial 50182543) whose goods include handheld data-collection devices. The filing could be an indicator of an upcoming Generalist AI device. ²⁸

Why it matters: Figure is patenting how it collects data from human operators, not just the robot itself, which suggests it sees its teleoperation rig as an asset worth protecting. With Generalist also filing for handheld data-collection devices, the tools for gathering training data are becoming products in their own right.

6. Hiring and the map: Apptronik staffs up safety and reliability testing

Apptronik is staffing up to validate Apollo. Its new roles include its first dedicated safety jobs, such as a Staff Systems Safety Engineer (Compliance) in Sunnyvale, and an Austin test and reliability group with a Manager, Test Operations and a Senior Staff Test Engineer, Reliability. Safety compliance and reliability testing arriving together may indicate Apollo is being readied for certification and longer customer deployments. It is also adding hand work, such as a sim-to-real engineer for tendon-based robotic hands.
Tesla is adding battery and gear-machining roles for Optimus in Austin, such as an Equipment Engineer, Optimus Battery and two Optimus Machining roles, a Manufacturing Process Engineer and a Manufacturing Process Tooling Engineer, whose postings say they "support the development and launch of the Optimus Gears manufacturing program." A new Supplier Industrialization Engineer, Optimus posting in Palo Alto describes "critical component development and qualification activities at suppliers" to "enable extremely rapid development cycles for the Optimus Actuators." That may indicate Austin is getting its own gear production and battery pack assembly for Optimus, with some actuator parts developed at outside suppliers.
Agility is staffing its Salem plant. Four operations roles opened there together on Oct 29, including a Staff Quality Engineer and a Staff Failure Analysis Engineer, which may indicate Salem is moving toward steadier production of Digit 5 parts. A correction to Issue #4: the two Fremont staff architect roles we reported as closed are back under the same IDs (simulation, embedded systems), so that was likely a brief unlisting, not a cut in software hiring.
The map grew from 101 to 102 companies with a new Meta (Robotics) profile. ²⁹

7. What to watch next

Agility: the result of the Churchill XI vote today, Nov 2, the final redemption level, the expected close on Nov 4 and the first AGLT trades from Nov 5.
Whether Physical Intelligence confirms its round, and whether Meta says more about Max.
CoRL 2026 in Austin, Nov 9 to 12.
Rhoda AI and XPeng's year-end production targets.