Google partners with Agile Robots
Google’s DeepMind is expanding into physical robotics by partnering with Germany’s Agile Robots to push foundation‑model AI into real‑world manipulation and industrial automation. The collaboration suggests new toolchains for sim‑to‑real transfer, vision‑language‑action models, and benchmarks for general‑purpose manipulation. (cnbc.com)
Agile Robots says it has more than 20,000 robotic systems deployed worldwide and reports a headcount of roughly 2,500 employees in its recent company release. (prnewswire.com)) The companies plan to feed real operational data from those deployed systems back into Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics models to iteratively train and fine‑tune controllers and perception stacks. (prnewswire.com)) Agile Robots’ product family includes the Agile ONE industrial humanoid (announced November 19, 2025), the Agile Hand, the FR3 force‑sensitive arm, the Diana 7 power‑and‑force‑limited arm, and Thor series arms, plus AGVs/AMRs and the AgileCore software platform. (therobotreport.com)) The company completed an acquisition of cobot maker Franka Emika in 2023 and says Agile ONE will be manufactured in Germany as part of its ramp toward humanoid production. (therobotreport.com)) Agile Robots has raised over $270 million in venture funding from backers that include SoftBank Vision Fund, Xiaomi and Midas Group, according to recent coverage. (techcrunch.com)) Google’s Gemini Robotics family — including the Gemini Robotics‑ER extended‑reasoning variant introduced in mid‑2025 — has been positioned by DeepMind for exactly these model‑in‑the‑loop deployments and earlier partnerships with firms such as Apptronik signaled the same strategy. (cnbc.com)) Public statements say the initial joint work will target high‑value industrial tasks in electronics manufacturing, automotive, data centers and logistics, while neither side has disclosed commercial terms or timetables for broad rollouts. (techcrunch.com))
