About Figure AI
Figure AI was founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock, a serial entrepreneur who had previously founded companies including the aviation startup Archer Aviation, based on the thesis that a general-purpose humanoid robot, capable of navigating and manipulating objects in environments originally designed for human bodies, could eventually address significant labor shortages across a very wide range of physical work, from warehouse and manufacturing tasks to eventually broader commercial and domestic applications, a vision shared by several other humanoid robotics companies but pursued by Figure with unusually large and rapid fundraising and prominent strategic partnerships from its earliest years.
The company's Figure robot is a bipedal humanoid with articulated hands designed for dexterous manipulation tasks, and Figure has pursued partnerships with major companies to pilot and eventually deploy its robots in real commercial settings, including a widely publicized partnership and investment relationship with BMW to explore humanoid robot use in automotive manufacturing, as well as a significant strategic partnership and investment from OpenAI aimed at developing more advanced AI models to power the robot's perception, reasoning, and manipulation capabilities, reflecting the broader industry recognition that general-purpose humanoid robotics depends as much on advances in AI models as on the underlying mechanical hardware. Figure has since developed its own in-house AI models, moving away from its earlier OpenAI partnership toward proprietary "Helix" AI models specifically trained for robotic perception and control, a strategic shift reflecting the competitive and strategic importance labs and robotics companies increasingly place on controlling their own core AI technology rather than depending entirely on an external partner. Figure has raised extraordinarily large and rapidly escalating venture funding rounds from investors including Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, and Nvidia, reaching a valuation exceeding $39 billion in its most recent funding round, among the highest valuations of any humanoid robotics company, competing directly with Tesla's Optimus program, Agility Robotics, and Apptronik.
