Agility Robotics vs Preferred Networks

Agility Robotics has a disclosed valuation of $2.1B, while Preferred Networks's valuation is not publicly available, making a direct size comparison difficult. Agility Robotics employs 300 people.

Agility Robotics has raised more in total funding at $641M, compared to Preferred Networks's $350M — a gap of $291M. Combined, the two companies have completed 6 known funding rounds.

Agility Robotics holds the higher Awaira Score at 80/100, compared to Preferred Networks's 72/100. The Awaira Score is a composite metric factoring in valuation, funding, stage, team size, and market presence — a 8-point gap that reflects meaningful differences in scale or traction.

Agility Robotics was founded by Damion Shelton in 2015. Preferred Networks was founded by Toru Nishikawa in 2014. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

Agility Robotics: Agility Robotics, founded in 2015 and headquartered in the USA, develops bipedal humanoid robots designed for industrial and commercial applications. The company's flagship product is Digit, a two-legged robot engineered to navigate human environments and perform tasks including sorting, moving, and handling objects in warehouses and logistics facilities. Digit stands approximately 5.3 feet tall and can operate autonomously or semi-autonomously in real-world settings. The robot uses machine learning and computer vision to perceive its environment and execute complex movements. Agility Robotics targets the logistics and warehouse automation sectors, addressing labor shortages and operational efficiency challenges. The company has achieved a $2.1 billion valuation following $641 million in total funding, positioning it among well-capitalized robotics firms. As of its Series C stage, Agility Robotics competes with companies like Boston Dynamics, Tesla's humanoid project, and other bipedal robotics developers. The company's competitive advantage centers on practical industrial deployment rather than research-oriented development. Growth trajectory reflects increasing enterprise interest in warehouse automation and humanoid robotics for material handling tasks. Partnership announcements and pilot deployments indicate expanding market validation, though large-scale commercialization remains in early phases. Agility Robotics focuses on commercially-viable bipedal robots for warehouse automation rather than general-purpose humanoids, differentiating it within the competitive robotics landscape. Preferred Networks: Preferred Networks develops deep learning technology applied to robotics, autonomous driving, and industrial applications, building neural network architectures for real-time edge inference in robot control, factory automation, and connected vehicle systems. The Tokyo company gained international recognition for early competition victories in autonomous navigation and robot manipulation challenges and developed its own deep learning framework, Chainer, which influenced the design of PyTorch before Chainer was eventually retired.\n\nThe company raised approximately $350 million including a landmark $105 million Series A from Toyota Motor Corporation and other strategic investors, making it one of the most valuable AI startups in Japan at the time of its fundraising. Preferred Networks collaborates with Toyota on autonomous driving AI, with NTT on communications AI, and with Fanuc on factory robot intelligence, creating a portfolio of deep technology industrial partnerships that provide both funding and deployment scale for its AI research.\n\nPreferred Networks operates in Japan industrial AI market where established relationships with major manufacturing and automotive companies provide a defensible position that international AI startups find difficult to penetrate through conventional sales approaches. The company research focus on edge AI inference for robotics aligns with Japan competitive strengths in manufacturing automation and precision robotics, markets where AI-enhanced robot intelligence is being adopted to address labour shortages and quality requirements that purely mechanical automation cannot satisfy.

Preferred Networks was founded first in 2014, giving it 1 year of additional market experience. Agility Robotics was founded later in 2015. In AI, even a year or two of head start can translate into significantly more training data, customer relationships, and institutional knowledge.

Agility Robotics has approximately 300 employees, while Preferred Networks has approximately 100-500. A larger team often signals higher revenue or venture backing, but in AI, smaller teams are increasingly capable of building at scale.

Yes, Agility Robotics and Preferred Networks are direct competitors — both operate in the AI Robotics space and likely target overlapping customer segments. This comparison is especially relevant for buyers evaluating both platforms.