Damion Shelton

Damion Shelton is an American roboticist and entrepreneur, co-founder of Agility Robotics, and the company's chief executive officer from 2015 to 2024. He led the company through its founding as a commercial spinout from the Oregon State University Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, raised more than $200 million across multiple funding rounds, and oversaw the commercialization of Digit, one of the first humanoid robots sold for non-research industrial use. As of May 2026 he serves as co-founder and chairman of the board at Agility Robotics, having transitioned from the chief-executive role in March 2024 when Peggy Johnson took over the operating leadership.

At a glance

• Education: Bachelor of Science in bioengineering and Bachelor of Arts in history and philosophy of science, University of Pittsburgh (2001); Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in robotics, Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute.
• Current role: Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Agility Robotics since March 2024; previously transitioned to President in early 2024 before the chairman role.
• Notable prior affiliations: Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of threeRivers 3D (2007 to 2012); Chief Executive Officer of Agility Robotics (2015 to 2024); adjunct faculty member, University of Pittsburgh.
• Key contributions: Co-founder of Agility Robotics; led the company from founding through the October 2023 Amazon Sumner pilot, the September 2023 RoboFab manufacturing facility opening, and the February 2024 Series B; cumulative fundraising in excess of $200 million.
• LinkedIn: damion-shelton-1b5b90a

Origins

Shelton entered the University of Pittsburgh for undergraduate study in the late 1990s, pursuing a dual-degree program in bioengineering and in history and philosophy of science. The pairing of an engineering-science track with a humanities-and-philosophy track reflected an interest in the conceptual foundations of scientific and technical work that recurred in his later public commentary on robot ethics and the nature of work. He completed both degrees in 2001.

Shelton continued at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute for his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in robotics, overlapping with Jonathan Hurst, his eventual Agility Robotics co-founder, in the Carnegie Mellon graduate-school cohort. The doctoral period focused on a combination of robotics-software-engineering work and applied-systems research, oriented toward the production of working systems rather than purely theoretical demonstrations.

Career

Shelton spent a period as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught a course on computer applications in bioengineering. In 2007 he co-founded threeRivers 3D, a Pittsburgh-area startup that developed a low-cost, high-volume laser scanner intended for novice users in the healthcare space, particularly the shoe-orthotic industry. Shelton served as chief technology officer and designer of the company's flagship scanner. threeRivers 3D was acquired in late 2012, providing Shelton's first exit and establishing a pattern of product-focused entrepreneurship in technical-instrumentation markets.

Agility Robotics was founded in 2015 as a commercial spinout from the Oregon State University Dynamic Robotics Laboratory. Shelton was the chief-executive co-founder alongside Jonathan Hurst (the academic-and-technical co-founder, a faculty member at Oregon State since 2008) and Mikhail Jones (the engineering co-founder, Hurst's Oregon State graduate student and the lead developer of the ATRIAS control software). The founding thesis was that the bipedal-locomotion research lineage developed in Hurst's lab produced a commercially viable humanoid earlier than competitor approaches that started from upper-body manipulation, and that Shelton's product-focused entrepreneurship experience would translate that lineage into a deployable industrial-task platform.

Shelton led Agility through the company's first commercial cycle. The first-generation hardware was Cassie, the bipedal research platform released in 2017 and sold to approximately a dozen academic robotics groups including Carnegie Mellon and MIT CSAIL. The transition to Digit, the commercial humanoid with a torso, arms, and end-effectors built on top of the Cassie-derived bipedal architecture, occurred from 2019 onward. Early Digit deployments at Ford in 2020 (last-mile package delivery research) and at adjacent industrial customers in 2021 and 2022 served as pilot-scale demonstration cycles informing the production-grade Digit specification.

The October 2023 Amazon Sumner warehouse pilot, announced jointly by Amazon and Agility, was the company's commercial-scale customer engagement and the first announced warehouse deployment of a humanoid robot at production-adjacent scale globally. The September 2023 opening of the RoboFab manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon, the first dedicated humanoid-robot manufacturing facility globally, was the corresponding production-side milestone. The February 2024 $150 million Series B led by DCVC and Playground Global closed the commercial-scale-up funding cycle that anchored Shelton's chief-executive tenure.

The March 4, 2024 leadership transition placed Peggy Johnson in the chief-executive role and moved Shelton to the president position, with a stated focus on commercial and investor engagement. He subsequently transitioned to the chairman-of-the-board role. Industry coverage reported that Shelton intended to use the post-CEO period to focus on public policy and engagement, including contributions to the national dialogue on robot ethics and the nature of work in a post-AI world, drawing on his Pittsburgh philosophy-of-science undergraduate background. In April 2025 the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering named him a 2025 Distinguished Alumnus in Bioengineering.

Affiliations

• University of Pittsburgh: Undergraduate student in bioengineering and in history and philosophy of science, late 1990s to 2001; adjunct faculty member.
• Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute: Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy student in robotics, early 2000s.
• threeRivers 3D: Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, 2007 to acquisition in late 2012.
• Agility Robotics: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, 2015 to March 2024; President, early 2024; Chairman of the Board, 2024 to present.

Notable contributions

• Agility Robotics co-founding (2015). Co-founder of the Oregon State University Dynamic Robotics Laboratory commercial spinout that produced the Cassie research platform and the Digit commercial humanoid.
• threeRivers 3D co-founding (2007). Co-founder and chief technology officer of the Pittsburgh-area 3D-laser-scanner startup, acquired in late 2012.
• Cumulative fundraising over $200 million (2015 to 2024). Led multiple funding rounds at Agility Robotics during the chief-executive tenure, including the February 2024 $150 million Series B led by DCVC and Playground Global, with previous participation from Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, and adjacent strategic investors.
• RoboFab manufacturing facility opening (September 2023). The first dedicated humanoid-robot manufacturing facility globally, opened during Shelton's chief-executive tenure at the Salem, Oregon site.
• Amazon Sumner warehouse pilot (October 2023). The first announced warehouse deployment of a humanoid robot at production-adjacent scale globally.
• 2025 University of Pittsburgh Swanson School Distinguished Alumnus in Bioengineering (April 2025). Recognition of his career trajectory from the Pittsburgh undergraduate program through the Agility Robotics commercialization period.

Open questions

• Public-policy and ethics engagement. Shelton has stated an intention to use the post-CEO period to contribute to the national dialogue on robot ethics and the nature of work in a post-AI world, drawing on his undergraduate background in history and philosophy of science. Whether this translates into structured advocacy, advisory roles, or written contributions at a meaningful scale will indicate the durability of the post-operator engagement.
• Chairman role and board influence. Shelton's chairman-of-the-board position at Agility Robotics establishes a continuing role in the company's strategic direction alongside Peggy Johnson's operating leadership. The degree to which the chairman role influences the company's decisions on the locomotion-research-lineage versus foundation-model-approach question, on the next-generation Digit platform, and on the production-ramp trajectory will determine the substantive content of the post-CEO position.
• Future entrepreneurial activity. Shelton's pattern across threeRivers 3D and Agility Robotics is product-focused technical entrepreneurship in instrumentation-and-robotics markets. Whether he pursues a third operating venture, transitions into venture capital or strategic-advisor roles, or focuses entirely on the chairman role and the policy-and-ethics engagement is an open question for his post-2024 trajectory.

Sources

• Damion Shelton LinkedIn profile. Career history covering threeRivers 3D, the Agility Robotics chief-executive tenure, and the post-2024 chairman role.
• Damion Shelton Celebrated as Swanson School Distinguished Alumni in Bioengineering. The University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering announcement of the April 2025 recognition.
• Damion Shelton Crunchbase profile. Crunchbase record of his founding-and-leadership positions across threeRivers 3D and Agility Robotics.
• Agility Robotics Bolsters Leadership Team. The company's announcement of leadership expansion including Shelton's role transition.
• Agility Robotics evolves from OSU research. Oregon State newsroom coverage of the commercial spinout origin in which Shelton co-founded the company.
• Companion profile: Agility Robotics for the commercial entity that Shelton co-founded and led as chief executive from 2015 to 2024.