GXO and Apptronik Plan Up to 1,000 Apollo Humanoids in Logistics Rollout

GXO signed a letter of intent to expand Apollo trials in live warehouses, targeting a first commercial deployment in North America in late 2027.

GXO Logistics has signed a letter of intent with Apptronik to expand trials of the Apollo humanoid robot and build a framework for commercial deployment through a Robotics-as-a-Service model, the companies said on Thursday. If the trials meet agreed performance, safety and operational targets, the plan calls for a global rollout of up to 1,000 Apollo robots over four years, starting in North America in late 2027.

The expanded trials, set to begin in 2027, will put Apollo to work in live GXO warehouses on goods-to-person and person-to-goods picking, case and tote movement, packing and sortation. Each task will be judged against jointly agreed productivity, safety and operational measures before it is cleared for wider rollout.

The partnership dates to 2024, when the two companies began a proof-of-concept program for Apollo in warehouse work. Earlier this year Apollo completed a pilot with GXO in the United States focused on autonomous picking of small consumer goods. The companies have also run data collection and live autonomous evaluations on more than 50 logistics tasks at Apptronik's Robot Park training facility.

GXO, the world's largest pure-play contract logistics provider, operates more than 1,000 facilities with over 150,000 team members. Apptronik, spun out of the University of Texas at Austin's Human Centered Robotics Lab, employs nearly 500 people and built Apollo on more than a decade of work that included NASA's Valkyrie robot.