Humanoid Robots in 2027: Who's Actually Shipping

No part of robotics gets more attention than humanoids, and no part has a bigger gap between demos and real work. This is a plain look at humanoid robots in 2027: which humanoid robot companies are actually putting robots to work, which are still in pilots, and what will separate them.

First, what "shipping" means

Companies use the word loosely, so it helps to separate three stages:

• Demo: a robot doing a task on video or on stage.
• Pilot: a small number of robots tested at a customer's site, often with engineers on hand.
• Paid deployment: robots doing a job for a customer who pays for the work, over months, at growing scale.

Most humanoid companies are between the first two. Very few are clearly in the third. Everything below is based on publicly available information, such as company announcements, customer statements and press reports.

Humanoid robots closest to real deployment

Agility Robotics (Digit). Agility has one of the most credible records. Digit has worked in logistics warehouses, including GXO's, moving totes on real shifts; Agility has reported more than 100,000 totes moved at GXO's site in Flowery Branch, Georgia, and GXO is adding Digit at two more sites from early 2027. It focuses on one narrow job done well rather than general-purpose promises.

Figure AI (Figure 03). Figure's robots have worked on BMW's production line in Spartanburg, South Carolina, over many months. It is the best-funded humanoid company, valued at $39 billion in 2025, so 2027 is when that funding needs to turn into large orders.

Serious pilots

Apptronik (Apollo). Apollo has been piloted with Mercedes-Benz, and Apptronik raised one of the biggest humanoid rounds of 2026 to scale manufacturing.

Boston Dynamics (Atlas). The production version of Atlas launched in 2026 and is training at a center inside Hyundai's Georgia car plant (Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics), with factory work there planned by 2028.

Foundation. Foundation builds humanoids for industrial and defense work and is at the pilot stage: in early 2026 it sent two of its Phantom robots to Ukraine for field testing. Its CEO, Sankaet Pathak, gave one of the most candid talks at AUTONOMOUS 2026 on where humanoids are real and where they are still a story.

Big claims, little public data

Tesla (Optimus). Tesla has shown Optimus in many videos and says it plans large-scale production, but it has not published clear numbers on how many robots are doing useful work. Reports differ widely, so treat any figure with caution.

The home robot bet

1X (NEO). 1X is going straight for the home. NEO sells for $20,000, and 1X says its first-year batch of 10,000 robots sold out, but there is little independent confirmation yet of robots arriving in customers' homes. Early versions rely partly on remote human help for harder tasks, so the question for 2027 is how much NEO can do on its own.

Volume leaders: China

By number of units, Chinese makers lead. Unitree sells humanoids at much lower prices than US rivals, mostly to researchers and developers, and says it shipped more than 5,500 humanoids in 2025. UBTech has also announced factory orders for its Walker S robots. Low prices are pushing humanoids into many more labs, even where the robots are not yet doing commercial work.

What to watch for humanoid robots in 2027

• Repeat orders: a customer buying a second, bigger batch is the strongest sign a robot works.
• Hours without help: how long robots run without a person stepping in.
• Price: humanoids need to cost less than the work they replace.
• A shakeout: with so much money raised, expect some companies to merge or fade as the gap between demos and deployment shows. We made the same call in Robotics Predictions for 2027.

For a wider view of the companies behind physical AI, see Physical AI Companies to Watch in 2027.

The humanoid debate was one of the most packed sessions at AUTONOMOUS 2026. To join the next one in San Francisco, get on the 2027 waitlist.