Agility Plants a 60,000 Sq Ft Digit AI Hub in Fremont
Agility Robotics opened a 60,000-square-foot facility in Fremont, California (announced July 16, 2026) as a Physical AI hub for teaching Digit new skills. Manufacturing stays at RoboFab in Salem, Oregon. Software, skill training, and deployment support get a Bay Area address — minutes from where Tesla is expected to scale Optimus.
What Agility Says the Site Does
From the company press release:
- Software and capabilities hub for AI that lets Digit learn more sophisticated warehouse and factory work
- Plans to hire nearly 200 people across AI/ML engineering and field ops
- Complements Salem manufacturing rather than replacing it
- Timed ahead of Agility’s planned public listing via Churchill Capital Corp XI
CEO Peggy Johnson: being in Silicon Valley’s talent pool should speed new Digit capabilities into customer sites.
Commercial Context
Agility’s release lists active deployments with Schaeffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and Mercado Libre. It claims more than $300 million of multi-year orders for Digit v5, subject to contractual milestones, plus a pipeline of over 30 customers.
TechCrunch’s coverage adds color: Digit already generates revenue hauling totes; Digits have moved 100,000+ totes at a GXO site (per prior Agility numbers); Digit v5, expected this fall, is meant to sense humans and work outside pure robot-only zones. Co-founder Damion Shelton stressed that safety stacks should not be generative AI — creativity belongs in applications, not brakes.
A Human’s Take
Fremont is a flex and a necessity. If you are the rare humanoid shop with actual customer throughput, you need a place to train skills as fast as the pipeline grows. I care less about the Optimus neighborhood jokes and more about whether those 200 hires turn multi-year order sheets into robots that still hit safety bars when the tote pile is messy.