TL;DR
The two-legged robot most likely to show up first at a real job is Agility Robotics' Digit, a warehouse worker that picks up totes and carries them where they need to go. This week its maker finished merging with a listed shell company, and its shares were set to start trading on Nasdaq on Nov. 5. The robot side of the news is the bigger part: Agility says Digit has now logged more than 65,000 hours of real-world work, that its U.S. factory is designed to build up to 10,000 robots a year, and that it has more than $300 million in multi-year orders, subject to contractual milestones (company claim), with named customers including GXO, Schaeffler and Toyota's Canadian plant. GXO plans two more U.S. sites in early 2027, and a tractor plant in Kansas starts a pilot that year. Walking robots taking the heavy, repetitive lifting off people's backs is moving from demo to payroll. Our chance that humanoids reach routine use in U.S. warehouses: 89%, likely by 2027. For the full odds and the timeline of robot milestones that leads from the warehouse floor toward the home, subscribe.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our labeled speculation on what it adds up to; and every source.