GXO, one of the world’s largest contract logistics companies, will expand its use of Agility Robotics’ Digit humanoid robot to warehouses in Statesville, North Carolina, and Lebanon, Tennessee, the two companies announced on 26 October. Deployments are due to start in early 2027 with the current Digit 4, moving to the newer Digit 5 once it is commercially available.
At the new sites Digit will take on repetitive material-handling work for e-commerce orders. At GXO’s site in Flowery Branch, Georgia, where a pilot began in late 2023, Digit moves plastic totes onto conveyors alongside existing automation. The companies say it has moved more than 100,000 totes there and logged more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation across all its customers. Those figures come from the companies and have not been independently checked.
Why it matters: humanoid robots have produced plenty of demos but few paid, repeat deployments. A large logistics firm going from one site to three under a robots-as-a-service contract is a modest but concrete sign that at least one customer wants more of them. Agility is also preparing to list on Nasdaq through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI, which it expects to close in the fourth quarter.