Agility Robotics opens Silicon Valley hub, says it won't join AI talent bidding wars

Agility Robotics has opened a new hub in Silicon Valley to attract world-class engineers to join the humanoid robot maker—but the startup has no intention of entering a spending war for talent.

Jonathan Hurst, Agility's cofounder and chief robot officer, told Business Insider the company is not interested in competing in the escalating competition over pay packages for top AI and robotics talent.

"One of the things that's been weird recently has been kind of the bidding wars for some of this really rare talent," Hurst said. "We're not going to do that because we don't want coin-operated employees."

New Facility in Fremont

On Thursday, Agility opened a 60,000-square-foot research and training facility in Fremont, California. The company expects to house nearly 200 existing and new employees at the site, spanning hardware engineering, AI and machine learning, and customer operations support.

Hurst described the facility as a "robot school" to teach Agility's Digit humanoid new skills.

The Fremont location, approximately 15 miles east of Palo Alto, places Agility closer to one of the world's deepest pools of technical talent—and in close proximity to some of the most well-funded competitors in the robotics space.

• Across the street is Meta's Fremont campus, housing its hardware R&D team, including its robotics division.
• About 10 miles south is Tesla's vast Fremont center, where the company is preparing for Optimus production.
• Across the Dumbarton Bridge in Palo Alto sits a cluster of other robotics companies, including 1X, Mind Robotics, and Serve Robotics.

Talent Competition and Compensation

Competition for top AI talent has been fierce, at times leading to eye-popping compensation packages. At Meta, top hires have been offered nine-figure signing bonuses. Other AI leaders at smaller companies can see base pay between $300,000 and $400,000, Business Insider previously reported.

Hurst said he has seen candidates receive what Agility considers a fair, market-rate offer, only for the prospective hire to return and say they've received double from another company.

"We're like, 'Go for it.' That's okay," Hurst said, adding that the startup prefers candidates who fit Agility's culture and mission.

To lure top talent, Hurst points to the company's progress: "We're the first to commercially deploy humanoid robots."

Commercial Progress and Plans

Agility is one of the few US robotics startups with humanoids performing sustained work beyond a research lab. The company first deployed Digit, a bipedal robot, for commercial operations in 2024. Since then, Digit has been deployed across manufacturing, distribution, and logistics operations, accumulating more than 65,000 hours of work.

Digit's primary tasks for now involve picking up bins and moving them to another location, Hurst said.

"We're doing this in a serious way. The we-are-going-to-build-a-sustainable-growing-company way," Hurst said. "It's not so much a tell-a-grand-story-and-hope-we-can-fill-in-the-gaps way."

Agility plans to go public via a SPAC later this year. The startup said in an SEC filing that it has more than $300 million in conditional multiyear orders for its next-generation Digit V5.