In the small world of humanoid robots, we have grown used to the big show: machines sprinting through heavily edited videos, demonstrations that race around social media. And then there is Digit, the robot from American manufacturer Agility Robotics. It doesn't dance, and it doesn't sprint through a glossy clip. It shifts crates around warehouses. And that, perhaps, is precisely why it is starting to win.
A new customer, no fanfare
On 10 December 2025, Agility Robotics and Mercado Libre — the big Latin American online retailer, a sort of local Amazon — announced a commercial agreement to deploy the Digit robot. No viral video, no robot turning somersaults: just a contract. According to Agility, the robot will be installed in a fulfilment centre (the warehouse where parcels are made ready for shipping) in San Antonio, Texas.
According to The Robot Report, Digit will at first concentrate on tasks supporting order picking, presumably the handling of crates — the plastic bins known as totes in the trade, which pass through a warehouse in their thousands.
The only number that matters this week
Here is the detail that changes everything. At the time of the announcement, Digit had already moved more than 100,000 totes in real commercial operations, according to Agility Robotics. Not in a demo, not in a lab: at real customers, in real warehouses, with real orders to fulfil.
That is an enormous difference from what we are seeing elsewhere just now. Over the same stretch, other humanoid robots are making the news mostly for their imagery: one sprints gorgeously through a video, another quietly retreats to the factory after promising us the living room. They are telling a story. Digit is posting a number.
Mercado Libre joins a club that already exists
According to Agility, Mercado Libre is joining a roster of customers already running Digit, said to include GXO Schaeffler (a specialist in logistics on behalf of other firms) and Amazon. In other words, the new arrival is not betting on a promise: it is picking a robot already battle-tested by some of the heavyweights of warehousing.
That raises a simple question, though one that rather spoils the usual narrative: did Mercado Libre pick Digit for its technical prowess, or simply because it is one of the few humanoids already trialled at scale under real conditions? When you have a warehouse to keep running, you tend to prefer the machine that has proven itself over the one that dazzles on camera.
What this unshowy labourer looks like
Physically, Digit is no movie athlete. According to The Robot Report, it stands about 1.75 metres (5 feet 9 inches), weighs roughly 64 kilos (140 pounds) and can lift up to 16 kilos (35 pounds). Enough to shift totes all day, and no more. This is a long way from the robot that hoists spectacular loads or runs a marathon. It is a worker, not a star.
How the market really splits
We tend to assume that the contest between humanoid robots sets the runners against the dancers, the ones putting on the most jaw-dropping demos. But the real dividing line may lie elsewhere. On one side, the robots that put on the show — and whose actual work we are still waiting to see. On the other, a robot that puts up the numbers, quietly, tote after tote.
The mark of seriousness in this sector may be tipping over: no longer the view count on a video, but the number of totes actually shifted in a warehouse. If that is the case, then the most boring robot of the moment is also, paradoxically, the one pulling ahead. It remains to be seen, over the coming months, whether these 100,000 totes turn into a lasting presence in our supply chains — or whether the humanoid fad will subside as fast as it rose.