Agility Robotics plans to establish a new hub in Silicon Valley, bringing more world-class engineers to join the humanoid manufacturer. Just don’t expect the startup to get into a spending war for talent.
Jonathan Hurst, Agility’s co-founder and chief robotics officer, told Business Insider that the company has no interest in joining the growing competition for pay packages for top AI and robotics talent.
“One of the strange things these days is it’s like a bidding war to acquire this really rare talent,” Hurst said. “We don’t do that because we don’t want employees who run on coins.”
On Thursday, Agility opened a 60,000-square-foot research and training facility in Fremont. The company plans to house nearly 200 existing and new employees here in hardware engineering, AI and machine learning, and customer operations support.
Hurst said the site will serve as a “robot school” to teach Agility’s Digit humanoid robots new skills.
Agility Robotics held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new facility in Fremont. agility robotics
The Fremont location, approximately 25 miles east of Palo Alto, puts Agility close to one of the richest pools of technical talent in the world. It also means Agility will be closer to some of the best-funded companies competing in the robotics space.
Across the street is Meta’s Fremont campus, home to the company’s hardware research and development teams, including its robotics division. About 10 miles south is Tesla’s vast Fremont center, where the company is preparing to produce Optimus. Across the Dumbarton Bridge in Palo Alto, you’ll find other robotics companies like 1X, Mind Robotics, and Serve Robotics.
Competition for top AI talent is fierce, sometimes leading to eye-watering compensation packages. The meta is offering nine-figure signing bonuses to top recruits. Business Insider previously reported that other AI leaders at small companies earn base salaries of $300,000 to $400,000.
Hurst said he has seen candidates make offers that Agility believes are fair and market value, only for the prospective hire to come back and say they received double the compensation from another company.
“We’re like, ‘Go for it,’ and that’s OK,” Hurst said, adding that the startup prioritizes candidates who fit into Agility’s culture and mission.
To attract top talent, Hurst pointed to his company’s progress, saying, “We were the first to commercially deploy humanoid robots.”
Agility is one of the few robotics startups in the U.S. where humanoids perform continuous work beyond the lab.
The company first introduced Digit, a bipedal robot, into commercial operations in 2024. Since then, Agility has deployed bots across manufacturing, distribution and logistics operations, accumulating more than 65,000 hours of work.
For now, Digit’s main job is picking up trash cans and moving them to different locations, Hurst said.
“We’re taking this seriously, building a sustainable growth company,” Hurst said. “It’s not that much I hope that I can tell an epic story and fill in the gaps. ”
Agility plans to go public via a SPAC later this year. The company said in an SEC filing that it has more than $300 million in conditional, multi-year orders for the next-generation Digit V5.