GXO Logistics and Agility Robotics announced on October 26, 2026 an expansion of their partnership that will bring the humanoid robot Digit to more distribution sites in the United States. The news is CONFIRMED: the announcement appears in the companies' joint official statement, published by GXO and Agility Robotics, and was covered by Unite.AI the same day.
Under the expanded agreement, Digit will support e-commerce fulfillment at GXO's Statesville and Lebanon sites, in North Carolina and Tennessee, taking on material-handling tasks the companies describe as highly repetitive. Deployments are expected to begin in early 2027 with Digit 4 and will migrate to Digit 5 once the new model is commercially available — an announced plan, not an operation already running at those sites.
From a Georgia pilot to a two-state expansion
The partnership began with a pilot in late 2023 at the Flowery Branch, Georgia, site. In June 2024, the companies formalized a multi-year Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) agreement, described in the statement as the industry's first formal commercial deployment of humanoid robots in live operations and the first agreement of its kind for humanoids. Since then, Digit has moved more than 100,000 totes at the Georgia facility, working alongside existing automation to move totes onto conveyors.
“Innovation is most powerful when it delivers practical solutions that create value for our customers and our people,” said GXO chief executive Patrick Kelleher. For Agility chief executive Peggy Johnson, the expansion is the clearest signal that the value is real: “GXO was the first customer to put Digit to work in live operations under a commercial agreement, and expanding to additional sites is the clearest signal that the value is real.”
Why the expansion matters
According to the companies, Digit has accumulated more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation across commercial operations and customer programs. That experience informed Digit 5, unveiled on September 15, 2026 and designed for cooperatively safe work close to people, with a broader range of industrial workflows. To support scale, Agility points to the RoboFab factory in Salem, Oregon, with about 70,000 square feet and a designed capacity of up to 10,000 robots per year, plus the Agility Arc fleet-management platform and its recently announced Pittsburgh expansion.
The announcement also fits Agility's path to the public markets: the company is preparing to go public through its business combination with Churchill Capital Corp XI, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and trade on Nasdaq under the ticker “AGLT” — a plan subject to approvals, as the statement itself notes.
For Geekiki readers, the case marks humanoids moving from pilot stage to a scale decision: no longer proving that the robot works in one warehouse, but replicating the operation at more sites, with a new model on the way.
This expansion is distinct from other Digit fronts already covered by Geekiki, such as the Pittsburgh center to scale the robot and the pilot at the AGCO factory in Kansas.
Sources
- GXO — GXO and Agility Robotics Expand Partnership to Accelerate Deployment of Humanoids in U.S. Operations
- Agility Robotics — GXO and Agility Robotics Expand Partnership to Accelerate Deployment of Humanoids in U.S. Operations
- Unite.AI — GXO, Agility Robotics Expand Digit Humanoid Deployments to More U.S. Sites
Image credit: Agility Robotics' Digit 5 robot, Agility Robotics publicity photo, via GeekWire.
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on cross-checking public posts on X and internet sources, including the official GXO and Agility Robotics statement and Unite.AI's coverage. Readers are advised to consult the original sources to confirm details before making any decision.
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