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Its competitors include Tesla, whose CEO has pitched its humanoid prototype Optimus as the future of the carmaker; and , which recently moved toward going public on Shanghai's stock exchange.

and move heavy bins and totes, Agility's flagship product, called Digit, is the 鈥渇irst humanoid robot employed and commercially operational in warehouse and industrial facilities,鈥� said Michael Klein, co-founder and chairman of Churchill Capital Group, which runs the special-purpose acquisition company that intends to merge with Agility by the end of the year.

Klein said on an investor call Wednesday that the company has backing from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank and Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. Its early customers include Toyota, industrial parts supplier Schaeffler, and Mercado Libre, the Latin American e-commerce giant.

While Agility describes its fully autonomous robot as a , the company's co-founder and chief robot officer Jonathan Hurst told investors Wednesday that 鈥渨e鈥檝e never set out to build a machine that looks like a person.鈥� Unlike other humanoids, like Tesla's Optimus, Digit's legs are more birdlike than human in a design that is meant to better fit the work they do. Its hands are more like grippers or claws.

Agility CEO Peggy Johnson said Digit specializes in manual labor that for humans would be repetitive, dirty and prone to injury.

鈥淭he demand here is large and increasing,鈥� she said on the investor call. 鈥淲e have companies reshoring production, older workers retiring, and younger generations just not opting for these types of menial jobs.鈥�

While earlier generations of industrial robots are typically so large and fast-moving that they must be fenced off from human workers, Hurst said upcoming versions of Digit will be able to work alongside humans in warehouses and manufacturing facilities. In the years to come, they could eventually find their way into hospitality, home services and elder care, he said.

Agility's plan to merge with Churchill's special-purpose acquisition company, , provides a quicker timeline for going public and fewer disclosure requirements.

Johnson said the company will use the capital it raises to expand commercial deployments and scale production of its next robot model, Digit V5. It will be the fifth generation in a line of two-legged robots Agility first unveiled nearly a decade ago after spinning off from a robotics laboratory at Oregon State University.

The company is predicting a more than $1 trillion market for the types of robots it is building, though it is far from the only one trying to make them.

The surprise news of its planned public debut attracted a crowd of well-wishers to Agility鈥檚 booth Wednesday at the sprawling Automate robotics trade show in Chicago, said Aaron Prather, director of market intelligence at the Association for Advancing Automation, which helped organize the event.

Prather said the race between Agility and China's Unitree to go public also underscored the different approaches of companies designing humanoids, with Agility narrowing its focus on 鈥渨orker bee鈥� robots and Unitree frequently showing off machines that dance on two or four legs and do backflips and other entertaining gimmicks.

鈥淢aybe it鈥檚 just maturing of the marketplace and these manufacturers are trying to find where their sweet spot is,鈥� Prather said. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l probably compete in some areas. But the space is so wide open, and everyone I think is trying to find where they fit.鈥�