Agile Robots Partners With Google DeepMind to Bring Gemini AI to Industrial Fleets

Agile Robots CEO and co-founder Zhaopeng Chen confirmed the Munich-based company has already installed over 20,000 robotics solutions worldwide — and as of Monday, every one of them became a potential node in Google DeepMind's AI training network. Agile Robots announced a strategic research partnership with Google DeepMind in which the company will implement DeepMind's Gemini Robotics foundation models into its bots, with data collected by those deployed robots used in turn to improve the underlying Gemini AI models.

The companies will work together to test, fine-tune, and deploy robots that use Gemini foundation models in industrial use cases across sectors, including electronics manufacturing, automotive, data centers, and logistics. Jointly training, deploying, and testing robotic solutions will create a scalable AI flywheel: data from real operations improves the models, and improved models expand robotic capabilities, unlocking broader deployment.

Chen said in the announcement: "Agile Robots has already installed over 20,000 robotics solutions worldwide, proving intelligent automation at scale. The huge opportunity ahead lies in autonomous, intelligent production systems that can transform entire industries. Integrating Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics models into our robotic solutions positions us at the cutting edge of this rapidly growing market."

Carolina Parada, Senior Director and Head of Robotics at Google DeepMind, said the lab is "excited to partner with Agile Robots as we develop more advanced AI models for the next generation of robots and to scale their impact across sectors," adding that "this research partnership is an important step in bringing the impact of AI to the real world."

The Gemini Robotics models at the center of the deal were built to address three core limitations in current industrial robotics. According to DeepMind, AI models for robotics need to be general, meaning they can adapt to different situations; interactive, meaning they can understand and respond quickly to instructions or changes in their environment; and dexterous, meaning they can perform the kinds of tasks people generally can do with their hands and fingers. In mid-2025, Google debuted two new AI models, Gemini Robotics and Gemini Robotics-ER (extended reasoning), bringing generative AI into physical action commands to control robots. Gemini Robotics-ER is a Gemini model with advanced spatial understanding, enabling roboticists to run their own programs using Gemini's embodied reasoning capabilities.

Agile Robots is not DeepMind's only industrial partner in this ecosystem. Google said in a blog post that it partnered with Apptronik, a Texas-based robotics developer, to "build the next generation of humanoid robots with Gemini 2.0." In January, Google's DeepMind said it would work with Hyundai's Boston Dynamics to develop new AI models for its Atlas robot. Agile Robots, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Enchanted Tools have all been granted access to the Gemini Robotics-ER model as selected partners.

Agile Robots was founded in 2018 and has raised more than $270 million in venture capital funding from investors including the SoftBank Vision Fund, Chinese hardware company Xiaomi, and Midas Group. The company was founded in Munich by renowned robotics researchers from the German Aerospace Center, and today employs more than 2,500 people in robotics and AI worldwide.

The new partnership gives Google real-world deployment data as it views robotics as one of the largest use cases for AI, competing against companies like Amazon and Tesla, and underscores a strategy of building multiple robotics partnerships as it leans into manufacturing as a key use case. As many in the industry, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, consider physical AI to be the next frontier for the AI market, these partnerships will likely not only continue but accelerate.