Agility Clears SEC; Zhiyuan Shelves IPO as Humanoid Capital Paths Diverge
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declared Agility's Form S-4 effective for its merger with Churchill Capital XI, clearing the final regulatory hurdle for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker AGLT. On the same day, Chinese media reported that Zhiyuan Innovation opened a new 1 to 1.5 billion yuan round at a 50 billion yuan valuation while shelving its IPO. The two leading humanoid robotics firms chose opposite capital paths: Agility seeking public-market liquidity, Zhiyuan continuing to rely on private capital.
Concrete evidence emerged for commercialization of robot foundation models. Skild AI reported reaching 100 million U.S. dollars in annual recurring revenue for its robotics foundation models, one of the few quantified revenue disclosures in the sector. Physical Intelligence opened the beta of its Pi API, allowing customers to upload robot data, fine-tune models and run cloud-hosted inference, with partners spanning strawberry harvesting to server assembly.
Primary-market capital continued flowing to early-stage robotics companies. Xianyin Future, a space robotics startup, completed three funding rounds in four months totaling several hundred million yuan, backed by Alibaba, China Mobile's chain-chief fund and AgiBot. Shenzhen-based Shita Robotics closed an angel round led by Huawei Hubble Investment. Separately, Nvidia plans 2 billion U.S. dollars in European AI investments after 8 billion U.S. dollars in the past year, and has already funded four French AI startups.
Downstream demand signals accumulated. Shanghai unveiled a smart manufacturing initiative targeting 8,000 humanoid robots deployed in factories by 2028, attaching concrete robot-density goals. JL Mag forecast first three-quarter net profit growth of 42.59 percent to 55.20 percent year on year, with robotics and industrial servo motor revenue doubling over the same period.
Two observations. First, whether the valuation gap between public and private markets for humanoid robotics widens, as Zhiyuan raises at a 50 billion yuan valuation while pausing its IPO and Agility pursues a SPAC listing. Second, whether robot foundation-model vendors can convert early contracts into recurring revenue, with Skild AI's 100 million dollar ARR and Physical Intelligence's API launch serving as early data points for that test.