Agility Robotics Names Three Directors for Post-SPAC Board

Agility Robotics announced on September 29, 2026 that Merline Saintil, Derek Aberle and Pierre Gentin are expected to join its board of directors as the company prepares to complete its previously announced business combination with Churchill Capital Corp XI. Following the transaction, the combined company is expected to operate as Agility Robotics and trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AGLT.

Saintil is expected to join Agility’s existing board as an independent director immediately, subject to applicable approvals. Aberle and Gentin are expected to join the board upon completion of the proposed business combination, subject to applicable approvals and closing conditions. Chief executive Peggy Johnson and co-founder Damion Shelton will continue as members of the board, and the company said additional board members will be announced at a later date.

The Incoming Directors

Saintil brings more than two decades of executive leadership in technology, product development and business operations, according to the company. She currently serves on the boards of Rocket Lab (RKLB ), where she is lead independent director, Symbotic and TD SYNNEX (SNX ). She previously held senior leadership positions at Change Healthcare, Intuit, Yahoo!, PayPal, Adobe and Sun Microsystems.

Aberle spent 17 years at Qualcomm, including serving as president from 2014 to 2018, where he oversaw global strategy and business operations and led the company’s technology licensing business. He is co-founder and executive vice chairman of Virewirx, serves on the board of InterDigital, and previously led Prospector Capital Corp. through its business combination with LeddarTech.

Gentin has more than 30 years of experience spanning law, business and public service. He most recently served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Previously, he was a senior partner and Chief Legal Officer at McKinsey & Company and spent nearly two decades in senior legal and risk-management roles at Credit Suisse. Earlier in his career, he was a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel and an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Agility said the appointments bring together executives with experience leading global technology companies, building strategic partnerships, navigating complex legal and regulatory environments, and guiding publicly traded businesses.

“We’ve already demonstrated through Digit 4 deployments that humanoid robots can perform valuable work in real customer operations. Our next challenge is bringing that capability to industrial scale,” Johnson said. She said reaching that scale requires experience building global businesses, forging strategic partnerships and establishing public-company governance.

“Merline, Derek and Pierre bring an exceptional combination of operational leadership, strategic judgment and public-company experience,” said Michael Klein, chairman and CEO of Churchill Capital Corp XI.

The Pending Churchill XI Transaction

Agility and Churchill XI announced a definitive business combination agreement on June 24, 2026. The transaction values Agility at a pre-money equity value of $2.5 billion and is expected to provide more than $620 million of gross proceeds, consisting of $420 million of cash held in Churchill XI’s trust account, assuming no redemptions, and approximately $200 million of incremental financing through a common stock PIPE committed at $10 per share. The PIPE is led by Foxconn with participation from existing and new institutional investors.

All existing Agility shareholders will roll their equity into the combined company and will be locked up for 180 days at closing. The boards of both companies unanimously approved the combination. Closing is expected in 2026, subject to approval by Churchill XI shareholders, SEC review of the registration statement on Form S-4, receipt of required regulatory approvals, approval by the relevant stock exchange to list the combined company’s securities, and other customary closing conditions.

Agility said it intends to use the proceeds to fulfill existing customer orders, expand commercial deployments, scale production of Digit v5, and continue investing in its integrated platform spanning robotics, physical AI, software, safety systems and manufacturing infrastructure.

Citigroup Global Markets is serving as exclusive capital markets advisor and lead PIPE placement agent to Churchill XI. BTIG is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Agility and as a PIPE placement agent to Churchill XI. Latham & Watkins is serving as legal advisor to Agility.

Agility’s current-generation humanoid robot, Digit 4, is operating in commercial environments including at Schaeffler, GXO and Toyota Motor (TM ) Manufacturing Canada; the June transaction announcement also listed Mercado Libre among active deployments. Through deployment commitments across nine customer facilities, Digit had accumulated more than 65,000 hours of operation as of the June announcement, according to the company. Agility reported more than $300 million of multi-year contracted orders for Digit v5, subject to the realization of certain contractual milestones, with a pipeline of over 30 customers. Digit 5 is anticipated to be commercially available in the second half of 2027.

The company’s RoboFab manufacturing facility is designed to support production of up to 10,000 units annually, and its domestic supply chain sources approximately 75% of Digit parts within the United States, according to the June release. Agility was established in 2015 by Jonathan Hurst, Damion Shelton and Mikhail Jones out of Oregon State University’s Dynamic Robotics Laboratory. It is headquartered in Salem, Oregon, with offices in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Fremont, California. Its stated strategic investors and partners include DCVC, NVIDIA, Amazon, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Foxconn, Schaeffler, Abico and Playground Global.