Humanoid robots in 2026: what is deployed, what is still a demo
· TexaHub · Robotics, AI in Industry, Artificial Intelligence, Technology Trends
Named customers, filings and disclosed volumes show a humanoid industry with real pilots, small fleets, thin revenue and safety standards still being written.
A test for the evidence
Humanoid makers publish a steady stream of videos, funding news and production targets. A more useful filter is narrower: which robots are working at a named customer site, doing a stated task, with figures that come from a customer, a regulatory filing or an independent reporter rather than only from the vendor. Applied to the main Western and Chinese companies, it leaves a short list of documented deployments, mostly pilots with small or undisclosed fleets.
One caveat applies throughout: even where a customer confirms a deployment, operating metrics are almost always supplied by the robot maker and have not been independently audited.
Figure and Agility: the most detailed records
Figure AI's work at BMW's Spartanburg, South Carolina, plant is the best-documented automotive case, because BMW itself has described it. According to The Robot Report, the earlier Figure 02 inserted sheet-metal parts for welding in the body shop during an 11-month deployment and and "supported the production of more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles" [1]. Figure's own account adds that the robots ran a 10-hour shift Monday to Friday, loaded more than 90,000 parts and logged more than 1,250 hours of runtime, against an 84-second cycle time target [2]. Figure also disclosed that the forearm was the main hardware failure point, and that it re-architected the wrist electronics for its successor [2]. Neither company states how many Figure 02 units were used [2].
In June 2026 BMW announced that Figure 03 would start a new Spartanburg task, which Figure describes as picking unsorted components from containers and sorting them into a sequencing trolley [1]. Figure's own post says the robot arrived in Hall 52 and must switch between precise picking of thin-walled parts and pulling a heavy cart, but gives no unit count, operating hours or commercial terms [3]. Figure raised more than $1 billion in committed capital at a $39 billion post-money valuation in September 2025 [4]. We found no primary source for Figure's production volumes or deployed fleet, and report none.
Agility Robotics, maker of Digit, has the most public financial disclosure because of its planned listing. Its merger announcement with Churchill Capital Corp XI values the company at a pre-money equity value of $2.5 billion and says Digit is commercially deployed with Schaeffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada and Mercado Libre, with more than 65,000 hours of operation across nine customer facilities [6]. Its September 2026 Digit 5 announcement names GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and says Digit reached a 100,000-tote milestone at a GXO facility with about 98% accuracy [5]. The two company documents differ on the named customers.
The filings give a sober picture of scale. The Robot Report, reviewing Agility's S-4, reported that the company generated $1.8 million in net sales in 2025 against a $140 million operating loss, and burned about $100 million in cash [7]. Agility says it has more than $300 million in multi-year Digit 5 orders [5]; the merger release says these are subject to contractual milestones [6], and The Robot Report notes that the filing attributes them to one customer [7]. Digit 5 itself is not yet shipping: early access is expected in the first half of 2027 and general availability by the end of 2027, the company says [5].
Apptronik, Tesla and Boston Dynamics: capital and plans ahead of fleets
Apptronik announced a $520 million Series A-X round in February 2026, bringing its Series A to more than $935 million, with backers including Google, Mercedes-Benz, John Deere and the Qatar Investment Authority [9]. The company says its Apollo robot is used by partners including Mercedes-Benz, GXO Logistics and Jabil to transport components, sort and kit, but it has not published fleet sizes or operating data [9]. The release said a new robot was set to debut in 2026 [9].
Tesla's Optimus remains a production project rather than a deployment. In its second-quarter 2026 update Tesla said it had decommissioned the Model S and X lines at Fremont and was installing first-generation Optimus lines, and that "the initial Optimus builds will be used in our Optimus Academy for training data collection and further functionality development" [10]. Its capacity table lists Optimus as under construction in both California and Texas [10]. Electrek reported that Elon Musk acknowledged in January 2026 that zero Optimus robots were doing "useful work" in Tesla's factories, and that he declined to give a 2026 production target [11]. Tesla names no external customer.
Boston Dynamics began production of its electric Atlas in January 2026 and said all 2026 deployments were "already fully committed", with fleets going to Hyundai's Robotics Metaplant Application Center (RMAC) and Google DeepMind, and further customers planned for early 2027 [12]. The RMAC, opened at Hyundai's Georgia Metaplant in September 2026, is described by Boston Dynamics as a facility for data collection and application testing, where Atlas trains on parts sequencing with "skilled pilots" and learns partly from teleoperation [13]. Hyundai said it will deploy Atlas starting with 25,000 units across Hyundai and Kia plants "over the next few years" [13]; these are statements of intent, and the number of Atlas units currently at RMAC is not disclosed [13].
China: real volumes, different buyers
Chinese makers report far larger unit numbers, and their exchange disclosures make them more verifiable than most Western private companies. According to Rest of World's reading of Unitree's IPO prospectus, the company sold 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025, and its average humanoid price fell from about 593,400 yuan ($85,000) in 2023 to 167,600 yuan ($25,000) [14]. Unitree posted an adjusted net profit of 600 million yuan in 2025, on revenue of 1.71 billion yuan [14]. The same report says over 70% of the humanoids Unitree sold in 2025 were for research and educational purposes [14], which suggests that high unit volumes are not yet evidence of industrial work.
UBTech, which reports in Hong Kong, said revenue from full-size humanoid products and services rose to 590.3 million yuan in the first half of 2026, on sales of 921 units, according to KrASIA [15]. The report describes the company expanding deliveries of the Walker S2 industrial humanoid and its wheeled Cruzr Y1, and does not break the 921 units down by model [15]. UBTech says its industrial deployments focus on material handling, loading and unloading, sorting and palletising; one named customer in the report is Airbus, which acquired a Walker S2 to explore aircraft-manufacturing uses [15]. The group still recorded a first-half net loss of 338.8 million yuan [15]. Evidence on how many UBTech units do productive work at customer sites, rather than evaluation, is thin.
The technical limits that remain
Runtime still depends on frequent charging. Agility says Digit 5's battery provides 90 minutes of runtime and charges in 9 minutes [5]; IEEE Spectrum reported that the robot can operate for more than 20 hours a day on that basis [8]. Boston Dynamics says Atlas will navigate to a charging station and swap its own batteries [12]. Spectrum also reported filing estimates that Digit 5's bill of materials will be $150,000 to $200,000 at launch, and that it would be offered as a service at something like $8,500 per month, figures the filing calls "purely illustrative" [8]. Spectrum's Evan Ackerman cautioned that the economics assume Digit 5 will be a near drop-in replacement for human labour, "which is not something that I'm entirely sure has ever happened with any robot, anywhere" [8].
Dexterity is the less visible constraint: the disclosed tasks above are tote handling, part loading, sequencing and kitting. Roboticist Rodney Brooks has argued that human dexterity "relies on a rich sense of touch" and that learning from video leaves much of that information out [18]. Figure's addition of tactile sensors and palm cameras to Figure 03 [1] is one response, but there is no published independent benchmark of humanoid hand performance in production.
Safety rules are still being written
The core safety problem is that a walking robot is unstable without power. A 2026 arXiv paper describes this as a "fail-passive gap": "removing power from a walking biped causes an uncontrolled fall, so classical de-energization is itself a hazard" [17]. Brooks has advised people to stay no closer than 3 meters to a full-size walking robot [18].
ISO 25785-1, a Type C standard for mobile robots with actively controlled stability, including humanoids, is under development with a US delegation led by people from Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics and the Association for Advancing Automation [16]. Existing standards such as ISO 10218 do not cover humanoid robot safety, and Agility's Melonee Wise said in 2025 that "there are zero 'cooperatively safe' humanoid robots" [16]. Agility now says Digit 5 is designed for cooperative safety and that Digit was the first humanoid to pass an independent field evaluation on a customer production line for industrial safety standards administered by OSHA [5]. We found no public document from OSHA or the evaluator describing that evaluation, and could not confirm the current drafting stage of ISO 25785-1 from a primary source.
In our assessment, humanoids are doing paid or pilot work at a few named sites, mostly moving totes and parts, while valuations rest on orders and capacity plans not yet delivered.
Sources
[1] BMW Group deploys Figure 03 humanoid after tests with previous version — The Robot Report, 29 Jun 2026
[2] F.02 Contributed to the Production of 30,000 Cars at BMW — Figure AI, 19 Nov 2025
[3] F.03 Arrives at BMW — Figure AI, 30 Jun 2026
[4] Figure Exceeds $1B in Series C Funding at $39B Post-Money Valuation — Figure AI, 16 Sep 2025
[5] Agility Unveils Digit 5 Humanoid Robot Built for Cooperatively Safe Work at Scale — Agility Robotics, 15 Sep 2026
[6] Agility Robotics and Churchill Capital Corp XI business combination announcement (Exhibit 99.1, SEC filing) — Agility Robotics / Churchill Capital Corp XI via SEC EDGAR, 24 Jun 2026
[7] Agility Robotics reports $1.8M revenue ahead of humanoid SPAC — The Robot Report, 7 Sep 2026
[8] Digit 5 Sets a New Bar for Humanoid Robot Safety — IEEE Spectrum, 15 Sep 2026
[9] Apptronik Closes Over $935 Million Series A — Apptronik, 11 Feb 2026
[10] Tesla Q2 2026 Update (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1) — Tesla, Inc. via SEC EDGAR, accessed 1 Oct 2026
[11] Tesla pushes Optimus V3 reveal later this year - again — Electrek, 22 Apr 2026
[12] Boston Dynamics Unveils New Atlas Robot to Revolutionize Industry — Boston Dynamics, 5 Jan 2026
[13] Boston Dynamics opens Metaplant Application Center to train Atlas humanoids — The Robot Report, 21 Sep 2026
[14] China robot maker Unitree files for $610 million Shanghai IPO — Rest of World, 31 Mar 2026
[15] UBTech's full-size humanoid robot revenue jumps 1,445% in H1 2026 — KrASIA, 31 Aug 2026
[16] Safety in Motion: Setting the Standard for Humanoid Robots — Tech Briefs (SAE Media Group), 14 May 2025
[17] Toward Certified Functional Safety for Industrial Humanoid Robots: The Fail-Passive Gap and a Feasibility Study — arXiv, 3 Aug 2026
[18] Why Today's Humanoids Won't Learn Dexterity — Rodney Brooks, 26 Sep 2025