$339M/year Tesla Optimus-ification of European factories
Jan-Erik Asplund
TL;DR: Born after Midea’s acquisition of KUKA exposed Europe’s loss of a domestic robotics champion, Agile Robots started with touch-sensitive arms for precision assembly and expanded through M&A into autonomous mobile robots, production lines and now humanoids. Sacra estimates Agile Robots hit $339M in revenue in 2025, up 51% YoY. For more, check out our full report and dataset on Agile Robots.
We've covered the humanoid robotics race in an interview with Foundation CEO Sankaet Pathak, the humanoid market with Figure vs Apptronik vs Agility Robotics, and the home robot market with $5T/year market for the human-shaped Roomba. To go deeper on one of the biggest European players in both non-humanoid & humanoid robotics, we researched Agile Robots ($250M raised, C-Ventures).
Key points via Sacra AI:
- After China’s Midea ($66B revenue in 2025, +12% YoY) bought German national robotics giant KUKA ($4.4B revenue in 2025, +10% YoY) in 2016, raising alarms in Europe over the loss of key domestic industrial capabilities, Chinese-born, Munich-based roboticist Zhaopeng Chen spun Agile Robots (2018) out of Germany’s DLR national aerospace lab to build robotic arms with highly sensitive, human-like touch. While traditional industrial robots are programmed to repeat the same fixed motions over and over, Agile’s sensors enable the highly delicate, precision work needed for use cases like smartphone assembly (Foxconn) & automotive assembly (BMW), selling its arms as packages of hardware & integration with custom training on specific tasks on enterprise contracts.
- Using M&A to expand from selling precision assembly arms into selling autonomous mobile robots that move materials between stations (acquired Idealworks, Oct 2023) and automated end-to-end production lines (acquired Thyssenkrupp, April 2026), Sacra estimates Agile Robots grew revenue from $215M in 2024 to $339M in 2025, up 51% YoY, and is guiding to roughly $690M in 2026, +104% YoY. Compare to non-humanoid U.S. robotics company Locus Robotics at $180M ARR in June 2026, +16% YoY in 2025, valued at $2B as of its 2022 Series F for a ~20x multiple on $100M ARR, the world’s largest pure-play autonomous mobile robot (AMR) company, China’s Geekplus, at $438M revenue in FY2025, up 31% YoY, valued at $2.82B at its July 2025 HKEX IPO for a 6.4x multiple, and warehouse automation company Symbotic (NASDAQ: SYM) at $2.5B revenue, up 29% YoY, valued at ~$6.5B for a 2.6x multiple.
- While Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) builds Optimus as a vertically integrated factory worker for its own production lines, Agile is unbundling the autonomous factory robot for every other manufacturer without an in-house robotics program across automotive ($2.8T), electronics ($1.4T) & pharmaceuticals ($570B). Now building Agile ONE as its bid to become Europe’s industrial humanoid champion, Agile Robots ($1.5B raised, C Ventures) is entering a four-way fight with fellow German NEURA Robotics ($1.7B raised, Lingotto), the UK’s Humanoid ($270M raised, Prime Movers Lab), and France’s Wandercraft ($142M raised, Bpifrance).
For more, check out this other research from our platform:
- Agile Robots (dataset)
- Locus Robotics (dataset)
- $180M/year ecomm Roomba for logistics & fulfillment
- Standard Bots (dataset)
- Sankaet Pathak, CEO of Foundation, on why humanoids win in robotics
- Bobby Healy, founder & CEO of Manna, on drone delivery for the suburbs
- Zach Rash & Daniel Singer, CEO & CBO of Coco Robotics, on why ground delivery beats drones
- $5T/year human-shaped Roomba
- Figure vs Apptronik vs Agility Robotics
- 1X
- Sunday Robotics
- The Bot Company
- Apptronik
- Physical Intelligence
- Skild AI
- Figure AI
