# GXO Is Putting Digit in Two More Warehouses. In August, Its CEO Said Humanoids Hadn't Paid Off Yet.

> Markdown twin of https://roboterminal.app/posts/gxo-digit-two-sites-no-payback · https://roboterminal.app/posts/gxo-digit-two-sites-no-payback.md

**Published:** 2026-10-28

GXO is placing a bet on a robot that isn't on sale yet, and it hasn't said how big the bet is. Neither company disclosed how many robots are going to the new sites, what GXO is paying, or when it expects the robots to earn their keep, even though two new buildings is real progress at a firm that runs more than 1,000 facilities.

GXO, one of the largest contract logistics companies, said on October 26 it will add Agility Robotics' Digit humanoid at fulfillment sites in North Carolina and Tennessee starting in early 2027. The headline proof point, 100,000 totes moved in Georgia, is the same milestone Agility announced eleven months ago, and GXO's CEO told investors in August that the company has run 45 humanoid pilots without reaching a return. The expansion is a bet on the next robot, and nobody has said how many robots it involves.

**Companies:** [Agility](https://roboterminal.app/companies/agility), [GXO](https://roboterminal.app/companies/gxo)

**Tags:** humanoids, logistics, warehouses, agility, gxo, raas, deployments

GXO Logistics said on October 26 that it will put Agility Robotics' Digit humanoid to work at two more of its U.S. e-commerce fulfillment sites, in Statesville, North Carolina, and Lebanon, Tennessee, "taking on highly repetitive material-handling tasks" ([GXO](https://roboterminal.app/companies/gxo)). The work starts in early 2027 on the current Digit 4 and "will migrate to Digit 5 when it becomes commercially available." Agility's chief executive, Peggy Johnson, called it "the ultimate proof point that customer operations are moving from pilots to large-scale network adoption" on an investor call the same day ([SEC filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2074973/000121390026112934/ea0309843-425_churchill11.htm)).

Our view: **GXO is placing a bet on a robot that isn't on sale yet, and it hasn't said how big the bet is.** Neither company disclosed how many robots are going to the new sites, what GXO is paying, or when it expects the robots to earn their keep. GXO did not say how much it is investing or when it expects a return, The Robot Report noted ([The Robot Report](https://www.therobotreport.com/agility-gxo-logistics-plan-expanded-deployment-digit-humanoid/)). Two new buildings is real progress for a humanoid company. It is a long way from network adoption at a firm that, by its own count, runs more than 1,000 facilities ([Agility](https://roboterminal.app/companies/agility)).

## The tote count is eleven months old

The evidence both companies lean on comes from GXO's site in Flowery Branch, Georgia. Digit started there as a proof of concept in late 2023, and in June 2024 the two signed a multi-year robots-as-a-service deal, which they describe as the first formal commercial deployment of humanoids in live operations. "Since then," the new release says, "Digit has moved more than 100,000 totes at the Flowery Branch facility." The robot picks up plastic totes and sets them on conveyors next to the warehouse's existing automation.

Agility published that same milestone on November 20, 2025: Digit "has moved over 100,000 totes at GXO's Flowery Branch facility" ([Agility](https://www.agilityrobotics.com/content/digit-moves-over-100k-totes)). So the number in this week's announcement is a threshold first crossed eleven months ago. The total today is presumably higher. Neither company has said by how much.

**The figure that would matter is totes per robot per shift, and it has never been published.** From June 2024 to November 2025 is roughly 17 months. One hundred thousand totes over that stretch is fewer than 200 a day for the whole site (arithmetic). That is a floor, not a rate, since we don't know when counting started in earnest or how many robots shared the work. Agility also cites "more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation," but that figure covers all of its commercial programs, so dividing GXO's totes by it would produce a number that means nothing.

## What GXO said when it wasn't announcing anything

On GXO's second-quarter call on August 5, an analyst noted the company's plan to run about 20,000 robots across its network this year and asked how many would be humanoids ([FreightWaves](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/north-america-becomes-gxos-fastest-growing-market-in-q2-topping-782m)). "In production, 0 will be humanoids this year," chief executive Patrick Kelleher answered. "We have a number of humanoids deployed in pilot. We've done 45 pilots on humanoids so far." After mentioning another pilot about to start in Europe, he added: "We have not achieved ROI on humanoids yet. I think we are a couple of years away from that." He also said "humanoids will absolutely feature in our solutions," but that "in production, we're probably 2 years away from that" ([Motley Fool transcript](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/08/11/gxo-gxo-q2-2026-earnings-call-transcript/)).

Read together, the August call and the October release are consistent. GXO doesn't think humanoids pay yet, expects that to change in a couple of years, and wants a head start on the vendor it has worked with longest. It has also tested Apptronik's Apollo and Reflex Robotics' machines, according to The Robot Report. Two new sites starting on Digit 4 and moving to Digit 5 is how you position for a payback you expect later, not evidence you have one now.

## Why the announcement lands this month

Agility needs the expansion more than GXO does. The company is going public by merging with Churchill Capital Corp XI and plans to trade on Nasdaq as AGLT; the registration statement became effective on October 13. On the investor call, Johnson cited a "$300 million digit 5 order subject to contractual milestones," a target of "up to 25 committed customer facility deployments, compared with 9 today" by the end of 2027, and 100 customers by the same date, up from about 30 prospects now. Digit 5, unveiled in September, is slated for early-access customers in the first half of 2027 and general availability by the end of that year.

Johnson also gave the model behind the revenue story: "Under our illustrative robots as a service model, a single robot can generate approximately $500,000 in revenue over five years." That's about $100,000 per robot per year (arithmetic). Agility didn't say this is what GXO pays. But as a rough illustration, if a single robot at that rate had done all of Flowery Branch's first 100,000 totes, the cost would work out to around $1.40 a tote; every additional robot in the fleet pushes that figure up (arithmetic). That's why the missing robot count isn't a detail. It is the whole economics question.

We made a similar point when Agility's merger filing first opened its books: the company finally has numbers in public, and the ones that matter most are still about units in the field ([Roboterminal](/posts/agility-s4-us-humanoid-books)).

## Objections

**"Two new sites from the company with the longest live humanoid deployment is the strongest signal anyone has."** True, and we aren't dismissing it. A customer that ran 45 pilots and came back to the same vendor is telling you something. It is telling you less about payback than the word "adoption" suggests, because GXO's own CEO said payback is still two years out.

**"Tote counts undersell the robot; the value is in labor GXO can't hire."** Possibly. Repetitive tote handling is exactly the job warehouses struggle to staff. But GXO hasn't published labor savings either, and a claim about hard-to-fill shifts still needs a robot count and a price to become an ROI.

**"Digit 5 will fix the economics, so judging Digit 4 numbers is beside the point."** That is GXO's bet, and it may be right. It also means the expansion's case rests on a machine that won't be generally available until late 2027, if the schedule holds.

## Three things to check

1. **November 16, 2026:** GXO's Investor Day. Whether humanoids show up with a cost, a unit count or a payback date, or only as a slide, tells you how seriously GXO's finance team takes them.
2. **Early 2027:** The first robots arriving in Statesville and Lebanon. The number that matters is how many Digits per site, and whether either company reports totes per robot.
3. **End of 2027:** Digit 5 general availability and Agility's target of 25 committed facility deployments. If GXO's two sites are still running Digit 4 then, the migration plan slipped.

## Sources

- [GXO release](https://investors.gxo.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gxo-and-agility-robotics-expand-partnership-accelerate/)
- [Agility release](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/10/26/3388115/0/en/agility-robotics-highlights-commercial-momentum-and-growing-enterprise-demand-for-digit-humanoid-robot.html)
- [SEC Form 425 investor call transcript](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2074973/000121390026112934/ea0309843-425_churchill11.htm)
- [Agility blog (Nov 2025)](https://www.agilityrobotics.com/content/digit-moves-over-100k-totes)
- [The Robot Report](https://www.therobotreport.com/agility-gxo-logistics-plan-expanded-deployment-digit-humanoid/)
- [GXO Q2 2026 call transcript (Motley Fool)](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/08/11/gxo-gxo-q2-2026-earnings-call-transcript/)
- [FreightWaves](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/north-america-becomes-gxos-fastest-growing-market-in-q2-topping-782m)

## Citation

```
"{quote}"
Source: Roboterminal · {url}
```

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Source: Roboterminal · https://roboterminal.app/posts/gxo-digit-two-sites-no-payback.md