Agile Robots raises $500M Series F led by SoftBank at an $8.5B valuation

Munich-based Agile Robots has raised a $500M Series F led by SoftBank Group, with Nvidia, Hitachi and T.Capital joining, at an $8.5B valuation to expand in the U.S. and add production capacity, including in Germany.

SoftBank leads, Nvidia and Hitachi follow

Agile Robots announced the round on November 12, 2026. SoftBank Group led it, and Nvidia, Hitachi (through Hitachi and Hitachi Ventures) and T.Capital took part. The $500M is about EUR 452M at that day’s exchange rate, and Reuters, Forbes and tech.eu reported the valuation at $8.5B.

The company says the money goes to U.S. expansion, new markets, more production capacity, including in Germany, and faster development of robotics applications. The round takes its total raised to about $2B.

The closed round is smaller than the talks Bloomberg reported in June, which spoke of about $800M. SoftBank is a returning backer: in 2021 its Vision Fund 2 put $220M into the company’s Series C at a valuation of about $1B.

“Physical AI will fundamentally change how the world builds, moves and makes things,” said CEO Zhaopeng Chen. Dennis Chang, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: “We believe physical AI will transform industries.”

Below, I look at the company behind the number, the market it is betting on and what this round says about European robotics.

From a DLR lab to 20,000 installed robots

Agile Robots was founded in Munich in 2018 as a spin-off of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Chen, who earned his PhD at DLR, runs it with cofounder Peter Meusel. In 2023 the company acquired Wessling Robotics, where both men had been part of the founding team.

The installed base is the proven part of the business. More than 20,000 of its robotic systems are installed in automotive, electronics, healthcare and logistics, and the company counts more than 2,000 R&D staff and more than 650 patents, according to Reuters figures compiled by Dealroom.

Humanoids are the newer and less proven bet. A production site at Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich, opened earlier in 2026 with capacity for up to 10,000 wheeled or legged humanoids a year, a figure Forbes described as maximum capacity. Agile has not disclosed how many humanoids it has shipped.

The research models ONE S and ONE SN are due to enter production from the end of 2026, with 1,000-2,000 units expected in 2027. The company plans up to about 2,000 research humanoids with Nvidia, TechNode reported on October 26. “Our vision is intelligent robots working alongside people in factories and warehouses everywhere,” Chen said.

A $1.9B humanoid market with a 42.8% growth forecast

BCC Research sizes the humanoid robot market at $1.9B in 2025, growing to $11B by 2030, a 42.8% CAGR over 2025-2030 (press release, November 26, 2025). That is BCC’s estimate, and sizing in this segment varies by analyst.

Set against BCC’s figure, a $500M round is a large check for a market of that size today. Agile’s 20,000 installed industrial systems are a different business from the humanoid segment BCC measures, so the valuation rests on both.

The rest of Europe’s robotics money arrives in far smaller pieces. On our own records, Bleu Robotics raised a EUR 5M pre-seed for factory humanoids on October 29, Machenta closed a seed of about EUR 35.8M on October 27 and Enact Intelligence raised about EUR 26.7M at pre-seed for robot touch on October 22. The full series sits in our European fundraising data.

Munich’s $8.5B answer to Neura’s $7B

The company says no unlisted European robotics company is worth more. For scale, Neura Robotics reached about $7B in June. Sereact in Germany and Humanoid in London are named as competitors.

Two private European robotics companies valued at about $7B and $8.5B in the same year is a notable data point for European hardware, a category where large private valuations have been rare.

Dealroom adds a caveat. Turning an installed base of industrial robots into volume humanoids is not yet proven at scale, and the valuation already prices that in. Nvidia appears twice in this story, as an investor and as the partner on up to about 2,000 research humanoids.

Chen says the round positions the company for a possible IPO. Imagine if the next large European robotics listing came out of a 2018 DLR spin-off in Munich. That is the scenario these investors are now paying for.

The 2027 unit count that will test the price

Fürstenfeldbruck can make up to 10,000 humanoids a year. The 2027 expectation for the research models is 1,000-2,000 units. The distance between those two figures is where an $8.5B valuation gets earned.

Remember: Agile has not yet published a humanoid shipment count. The first one it does publish will tell us more about European physical AI than this round. Let’s keep count!