AGCO signs Agility for a 2027 Digit humanoid pilot at its Kansas plant

AGCO, the maker of Fendt, Massey Ferguson and Valtra tractors, will put Agility Robotics' Digit humanoid on its own assembly floor. The two companies said in a joint press release on Oct 20 that they have signed a commercial agreement for a U.S. pilot that is expected to begin in 2027 at AGCO's production facility in Hesston, Kansas.

The release gives the tasks but not the money. Digit will start with parts sorting and stacking and the placement of totes for storage, work that AGCO describes as repetitive and physically demanding. Neither company disclosed the number of robots, the contract value, the pilot's length or what would trigger a wider rollout. That gap matters, because the announcement arrives 13 days before Churchill Capital Corp XI shareholders vote on Nov 2 on the merger that would list Agility on Nasdaq as AGLT.

What AGCO actually signed up for

Thomas Enghof, AGCO's director of manufacturing technology, said in the release that the company sees humanoid robots and AI as teammates that can take on repetitive, strenuous or hazardous tasks in workflows built around people, under strict safety governance. Daniel Diez, Agility's chief business officer, said the robots would support AGCO employees in demanding tasks and show measurable impact in production.

The release says AGCO is starting at Hesston, which implies other sites could follow, but it names none. It also says Digit can be managed through Agility Arc, the company's cloud platform for deploying robot fleets, so that customers can automate without large facility changes. AGCO, listed on the New York Stock Exchange and headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, holds its third-quarter earnings call on Oct 29, the next occasion for management to say more.

A sixth named customer, and the first from farm equipment

The release lists Toyota, GXO and Schaeffler as existing Digit users. Adding the customers Agility has named in its listing documents, as tracked in the MEKAWIRE explainer on the company ([What is Agility Robotics](/news/what-is-agility-robotics-digit-5-funding-spac-listing-aglt-customers-explained-20261016)), AGCO is the sixth publicly named Digit customer after GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon, Mercado Libre and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and the only agricultural machinery maker among them.

The tasks are the ones Digit was designed for. Agility sells a tote mover with legs, with swappable grippers rather than five-fingered hands. The company says Digit has logged more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation. Its next model, Digit 5, carries up to 22.7 kg, works beside people without safety fences and reaches early customers in the first half of 2027, the same year the AGCO pilot is due to start.

Why the money is missing from the headline

Agility's Form S-4 discloses more than $300m of milestone-based Digit 5 orders, of which $300m comes from a single unnamed customer, against 2025 net sales of $1.782m. A named industrial customer without a figure does not change that arithmetic. It does widen the list of sectors Agility can point to: third-party logistics, automotive, e-commerce, and now heavy agricultural equipment.

MEKAWIRE's database shows Agility's verified priced rounds since its 2022 Series B at about $367m, and the merger agreement values the company at $2.5bn before new money, 1.25 times the $2.0bn post-money of its June 2025 Series C.