Apptronik, an Austin-based maker of humanoid robots, on Tuesday introduced a brand new pilot partnership with American provide chain/manufacturing stalwart, Jabil. The deal arrives two weeks after Apptronik introduced a $350 million Series A financing spherical geared toward scaling up manufacturing of its Apollo robotic.
The Jabil deal is the second main pilot introduced by Apptronik. It follows a March 2024 partnership that put Apollo to work on the Mercedes-Benz manufacturing ground. While the corporate tells TechCrunch that its partnership with the automaker is ongoing, it has but to graduate past the pilot stage.
In addition to check operating the humanoid robotic on its manufacturing unit ground, this new deal additionally finds Florida-based Jabil and Apptronik turning into manufacturing companions. Once Apollo is set to be commercially viable, Jabil will start producing the robotic in its personal factories. This implies that ought to every thing go in keeping with plan, the humanoid robotic will finally be put to work constructing itself.
Given the humanoid trade’s deal with manufacturing, such offers appear to be an inevitability. The prospect of humanoids constructing humanoids continues to be a methods off for Apptronik, nevertheless. The robotics startup lately advised TechCrunch that it’s focusing on 2026 to start manufacturing industrial items.
For the time being, the Jabil deal will discover an undisclosed variety of Apollo programs performing a spread of “easy, repetitive intralogistics and manufacturing duties,” together with issues like sorting and transporting components. The real-world validation is a key step towards scaling the robotic for manufacturing. The higher Apollo performs on the Jabil manufacturing unit ground, the nearer it turns into to slotting right into a manufacturing line that may finally embrace Apollo itself.
Apptronik is considered one of a variety of corporations constructing humanoid robots for industrial functions, together with Agility, Boston Dynamics, Figure, and Tesla. Of these, solely Agility has introduced that its robots have been deployed past an preliminary pilot part.
Competition could also be stiff for the nascent class, however Apptronik has a variety of components working in its favor. In addition to lots of of hundreds of thousands in funding, the University of Texas spinoff has a decade of expertise engaged on humanoids, together with NASA’s Valkyrie robotic. Last December, Apptronik introduced a partnership with Google DeepMind to develop AI for its humanoid programs.
