SHREWD MOVE
Humanoid maker Agility names former Microsoft exec Peggy Johnson as new CEO
Agility Robotics, the Corvallis, Ore.-based humanoid maker with a robot testing space and offices in Lawrenceville, announced Monday that Peggy Johnson, a former Microsoft executive, will take over as CEO.
Damion Shelton, the co-founder and former CEO who has led the startup to partnerships with Amazon and the logistics giant GXO, positioning Agility to produce 10,000 humanoid robots a year, will transition to president.
“We want to stay focused on customer outcomes,” he said, which pairs, “very rapidly evolving AI” with “something that’s useful and safe and economically interesting.”
Now that there’s a clear business path ahead, he said it was time to bring in “someone whose job is to execute.”
The shift marks the maturation of a company Mr. Shelton started nine years ago with fellow Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Jonathan Hurst, who serves as chief robotics officer.
It comes during an explosion of commercial interest in human-like robots, including a $675 million raise last month by Californiabased Figure AI, from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI. Billionaire
Elon Musk is pursuing his own humanoid called Optimus and has said he expects there to be 1 billion humanoid robots by 2040.
In the announcement, Mr. Shelton described Ms. Johnson as “the perfect leader to take Agility through the transition from cutting-edge technology startup to leading global robotics company.”
He said the company started searching for a new CEO in August.
After leaving Microsoft in 2020, Ms. Johnson became CEO of Magic Leap, helping the
struggling augmented-reality company based in Plantation, Fla., transition its customer base from individuals to businesses.
She appears poised to lead Agility into a similar period of rapid commercialization.
“I am thrilled to be joining the finest robotics team on the planet,” Ms. Johnson said in the Monday announcement. “Shelton and his exceptional team have positioned the company for global scale and growth across industries. This is Agility’s time.”
Agility, which has about 250 employees, was the first to market a humanoid robot, Cassie, back in 2017. The team has raised $180 million from investors and remains confident in its business position as the competition heats up.
“We’re comfortable, frankly, with our own tech,” Mr. Shelton told the Post-Gazette last fall.
On Monday, he said Figure AI’s $675 million raise “creates a very interesting valuation data point for us.”
“I think we stack up really well.”
A hands-on leader, Mr. Shelton has tackled the engineering and ethical challenges of robot development since 2015, as Agility’s increasingly capable humanoids ambled about a shared Lawrenceville building known as the Chocolate Factory. In 2022, the startup joined Boston Dynamics in pledging not to weaponize robots.
Mr. Shelton said he looks forward to continued thought leadership as president.
“Public policy — particularly now two years into the modern AI revolution — is something that I want to make sure to keep building up,” he said.
Agility plans to start mass producing its two-legged bots, called Digit, which can move totes and respond to spoken prompts, at a new Oregon production center set to open this year. It’s showing them off this week at MODEX 2024, a supply chain trade show in Atlanta.