Latest / Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts / America's First Humanoid Robot Company to Go Public Made $1.8 Million Last Year, Wants $2.5 Billion, and Its Own Filing Doubts It Survives Without the Deal
Transcript
- 0:00[Host] This is Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, the show where the robot finally hands over its pay stub. The Robot Report reported yesterday that Agility Robotics, whose Digit robots move bins for Amazon and Toyota, has filed the paperwork for its stock listing, and the paperwork says the company made about one point eight million dollars last year.
- 0:18[Guest] One point eight million in sales, against a net loss of a hundred and thirty-eight million. And it is asking public investors to value it at two and a half billion dollars.
- 0:29[Host] We covered this in June, when Agility announced the deal and the argument for it was a hundred thousand totes moved in a Georgia warehouse. So what did those totes earn?
- 0:39[Guest] Now the filing puts the totes and the price on the same page. The whole year of sales would not cover what Citi collects for advising on the deal.
- 0:48[Host] Every startup loses money before it makes any. What makes this one different?
- 0:52[Guest] One sentence in it. Agility writes that without the merger, there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. Accounting-speak for "we may not make it through the year." The filing says the cash on hand is not enough to fund the next year of operations.
- 1:09[Host] So are the people buying these shares betting on a robot company, or funding its survival?
- 1:14[Guest] The deal is built for the second one. It only closes if a minimum amount of new cash actually shows up, and a group of investors led by Foxconn, the company that assembles iPhones, agreed in advance to put in roughly that minimum.
- 1:28[Host] What does one of these robots cost a warehouse, compared to a person?
- 1:32[Guest] The filing gives the price list. Rent a Digit and you pay about eighty-five hundred dollars a month plus a setup fee, and Agility keeps the software and the repairs on its own books. That rental is the business Agility is selling investors.
- 1:46[Host] Eighty-five hundred a month is over a hundred thousand a year. No warehouse worker makes that.
- 1:52[Guest] The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median hand material mover at just under forty thousand a year. But a robot can work every shift. Agility says the rental is priced below what a worker costs once you add benefits, and that only pencils out if the robot is on the floor around the clock.
- 2:10[Host] How many robots did they actually sell last year?
- 2:13[Guest] The filing does not say outright, but divide last year's robot sales by its own sticker price and you get roughly eight. Each one still costs Agility more to build than it collects in a year of rent.
- 2:25[Host] Eight robots. And they built a factory in Oregon sized for thousands a year?
- 2:30[Guest] Designed for exactly that. The bridge from eight to thousands is one order. Three hundred million dollars for a fleet of robots, from one customer, on multi-year rental contracts, and every dollar of it depends on Agility hitting product milestones first.
- 2:43[Host] So the order is real, but is any of that money in the bank yet?
- 2:48[Guest] None of it counts as revenue yet, and the customer also gets warrants, a right to buy shares at a set price, that vest as the robots arrive. The biggest customer is being paid in stock to be the biggest customer.
- 3:01[Host] Where does the person whose job this is show up in the filing?
- 3:05[Guest] In the risk section. Agility lists employee resistance, organized labor concerns, and negative public perception about humanoids displacing workers as things that could slow sales. The company selling the robot is telling investors the worker might push back, and that this is a business risk.
- 3:20[Host] Did the outside firm that blessed the price as fair buy the whole robot story?
- 3:25[Guest] It did not have to. The valuation firm priced only one job, moving totes, and none of the other tasks Agility says it is developing. Two and a half billion dollars is the price of a bin-moving robot, and only that.
- 3:38[Host] Meanwhile, this is not the first humanoid company anywhere to go public, is it?
- 3:43[Guest] No. Unitree, a Chinese maker, listed in Shanghai last month and its shares soared on day one, and Reuters reported yesterday that Chinese makers shipped nearly all of the world's humanoids last year. The first American one to open its books did it with a warning that it may not last the year alone.
- 4:01[Host] When the deal was announced, the case for going first was that retail investors had no other way in. Does that still hold?
- 4:08[Guest] It holds, and it now cuts the other way, because those retail investors are the ones being asked to fill the hole. The point where a machine becomes the cheapest reliable way to move a bin is real, and this filing prices it at eighty-five hundred a month. What is not settled is whether the company that got there first survives to collect.
- 4:29[Host] So the robot pencils out for the warehouse before the robot company pencils out for the investor.
- 4:34[Guest] That is the order the filing describes, so for more on what happens when a robot-hour gets a sticker price, head to unscarcity dot ai. The book is on Amazon, the audiobook is on Spotify. This has been Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts.