Servoservobrief.com, Friday, November 13, 2026
Capital-and-deployment day: a half-billion into a European humanoid maker and a conditional path to 1,000 warehouse robots.
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SoftBank leads $500M into Agile Robots at an $8.5B valuation
Munich-based Agile Robots raised a $500M Series F led by SoftBank, with NVIDIA, Hitachi and T.Capital joining, bringing total funding to $2B. The company spun out of the German Aerospace Center in 2018, has deployed over 20,000 industrial robotic systems, and runs a factory near Munich rated for up to 10,000 legged and wheeled humanoids a year. It plans roughly 2,000 humanoids in 2026 (vendor-reported) and is in trials with customers including Audi.
Read more on Quartz, SiliconAngle, Forbes, Sifted, tech.eu -
GXO and Apptronik sign LOI toward up to 1,000 Apollo humanoids
GXO, the largest pure-play contract logistics provider, signed a letter of intent with Apptronik to expand Apollo warehouse trials and build a Robotics-as-a-Service model, with a conditional global rollout of up to 1,000 robots over four years. Expanded trials start in 2027 across picking, tote movement, packing and sortation, with initial North American commercial deployment targeted for late 2027 if KPIs are met. This is an LOI with performance gates, not a firm order; Apollo already completed a US picking pilot earlier in 2026.
Read more on GXO, Business Insider, Unite.AI, The AI Insider -
Weite Robotics raises hundreds of millions of yuan for touch sensors
Shanghai-based Weite Robotics (ViTai), a maker of visuotactile sensors that let robots judge grip force and detect slippage, raised a Series A in the hundreds of millions of yuan, co-led by CRRC Capital and Yongxin Ark. Touch sensing is one of the harder gaps in dexterous manipulation, and state-linked industrial backing points to China building out the humanoid supply chain beyond actuators and bodies.
Read more on Dealroom -
FFR reports $2.3M in cumulative robotics revenue after Faraday Future deal
FF EAI Robotics (FFR), which closed its acquisition of Faraday Future's robotics unit on October 23, reported roughly $2.3M in unaudited revenue and $593,000 gross profit (26% margin) for the acquired business over the nine months ended September 30. The numbers are small and the business centers on US K-12 robotics education, not factory autonomy, which sets the real scale of this newly public pure-play well below its branding.
Read more on PR Newswire via TradingView