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Apptronik , an Austin - based maker of humanoid robots , on Tuesday announced a new pilot program partnership with American provision mountain chain / manufacture loyalist , Jabil . The mountain arrives two weeks afterApptronik announced a $ 350 million Series Afinancing round of golf aimed at scale up output of itsApollorobot .
The Jabil plenty is the second major pilot announced by Apptronik . It follows a March2024 partnershipthat put Apollo to play on the Mercedes - Benz fabrication base . While the company tells TechCrunch that its partnership with the automaker is ongoing , it has yet to graduate beyond the airplane pilot leg .
In gain to try out bleed the humanoid robot on its factory floor , this new sight also finds Florida - based Jabil and Apptronik becoming invent partners . Once Apollo is determined to be commercially viable , Jabil will start producing the automaton in its own factories . This mean that should everything go agree to program , the mechanical man robot will eventually be put to work building itself .
throw the humanoid industry ’s stress on fabrication , such deals seem like an inevitableness . The prospect of android building humanoids is still a way off for Apptronik , however . The robotics startup late tell TechCrunch that it is aim 2026 to begin manufacture commercial units .
For the time being , the Jabil mess will rule an undisclosed number of Apollo systems performing a range of “ simple , insistent intralogistics and manufacturing job , ” including things like class and transporting share . The genuine - world proof is a fundamental measure toward scaling the golem for manufacture . The full Apollo perform on the Jabil mill floor , the closer it becomes to slotting into a yield product line that will eventually let in Apollo itself .
Apptronik is one of a bit of caller build humanoid robot for industrial applications , include Agility , Boston Dynamics , Figure , and Tesla . Of these , only Agility has announced that its golem have been deploy beyond an initial original phase .
contest may be unshakable for the nascent family , but Apptronik has a number of elements working in its favor . In plus to hundreds of millions in funding , the University of Texas spinoff has a decade of experience working on android , include NASA ’s Valkyrie robot . Last December , Apptronik declare a partnership with Google DeepMind to develop AI for its humanoid systems .
