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W. Andrew Robinson
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information technology Robotics Artificial intelligence |
| Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Brett Adcock |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California, U.S. |
| Products | Figure 01 Figure 02 |
Number of employees | 180 |
| Website | www |
Figure AI, Inc. is a United States-based robotics company specializing in the development of AI-powered humanoid robots.[1] It was founded in 2022, by Brett Adcock, the founder of Archer Aviation and Vettery.[2]
History
In 2022, the company introduced its prototype, Figure 01, a bipedal robot designed for manual labor, initially targeting the logistics and warehousing sectors.[3]
In May 2023, the company raised $70 million from investors led by Parkway Venture Capital.[4]
On January 18, 2024, Figure announced a partnership with BMW to deploy humanoid robots in automotive manufacturing facilities.[5]
In February 2024, Figure AI secured $675 million in venture capital funding from a consortium that includes Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, and the startup-funding divisions of Amazon and OpenAI.[1][6][7] The funding valued the company at $2.6 billion.[1] It also announced a partnership with OpenAI. The collaboration includes OpenAI building specialized AI models for Figure's humanoid robots, allowing them to accelerate Figure's development timeline by enabling its robots to "process and reason from language".[7] In 2025 Figure ended its collaboration with OpenAI, stating that large language models are "getting smarter yet more commoditized".[8]
In February, Figure AI announced Helix, the next generation of its humanoid robot.[9]
On March 15, 2025, Figure AI introduced BOTQ, a manufacturing facility aiming to produce 12,000 humanoids per year. Figure AI plans to progressively use its own humanoid robots to assist in building additional robots.[10][11]
Products
Figure 02
On August 6, 2024, Figure AI introduced Figure 02, a new version of its humanoid robot. The company described it as the next step toward deploying humanoids for industrial use. Figure 02 features integrated cabling in its limbs and a battery integrated into the torso. It is equipped with 6 RGB cameras, paired with an onboard vision language model. Powered by NVIDIA RTX GPU-based modules, its inference capabilities provide 3x of the computing power of the previous model.[12] It is also equipped with microphones and speakers combined with a custom AI model, developed in partnership with OpenAI to facilitate conversational capabilities with humans. The redesigned five-fingered robotic hands have 16 degrees of freedom and the ability to carry objects up to 25kg. Figure 02 robots have been tested at a BMW plant in South Carolina.[13][14]
Helix
Helix is an evolved version of Figure 02 that comes with 35 degrees of freedom, including human-like wrists, hands, and fingers. It features Helix VLA, a generalist vision-language-action neural network that can control two robots at once. The system can observe its surroundings, respond to natural language commands, interact with the real world without the extended training required by prior generations. Helix can control two robots simultaneously and direct them to collaborate with each other. Each robot has two GPUs. System 2 handles high-level planning at 7-9 Hz (operations per second), while System 1 provides low-level control at 200 Hz. System 2 plans tasks, while System 1 carries them out. Figure claims that its robots can pick up nearly any small household object, even those it hasn't seen before.[9]
References
- ^ a b c Palmer, Annie (2024-02-29). "Humanoid robot startup Figure AI valued at $2.6 billion as Bezos, OpenAI, Nvidia join funding". CNBC. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
- ^ Kingson, Jennifer A. (Mar 17, 2023). "Humanoid robots are coming". Axios.
- ^ Berg, Nate (February 3, 2023). "The race to build AI-powered humanoids is heating up". Fast Company.
- ^ Hu, Krystal (May 24, 2023). "AI startup Figure raises $70 million to build humanoid robots". Reuters.
- ^ "Figure announces commercial agreement with BMW Manufacturing to bring general purpose robots into automotive production". www.prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved 2024-04-03.
- ^ Singh, Jaspreet (February 24, 2024). "Bezos, Nvidia join OpenAI in funding humanoid robot startup, Bloomberg reports". Reuters.
- ^ a b O'Brien, Matt (March 3, 2024). "Humanoid robot-maker Figure gets funding from OpenAI, Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and other tech giants". Fast Company.
- ^ Bastian, Matthias (2025-02-06). "Robotics startup Figure AI drops OpenAI because LLMs are 'getting smarter yet more commoditized'". The Decoder. Retrieved 2025-04-13.
- ^ a b Salas, Joe (2025-02-21). "Figure's humanoids start doing tasks they weren't trained for". New Atlas. Retrieved 2025-03-01.
- ^ "BotQ: A High-Volume Manufacturing Facility for Humanoid Robots". FigureAI. 2025-03-15. Retrieved 2025-03-17.
- ^ McFadden, Christopher. "BotQ: Figure unveils humanoid factory where robots will build robots". Interesting Engineering. Retrieved 2025-03-17.
- ^ Martin, Scott (2024-08-08). "Figure Unveils Next-Gen Conversational Humanoid Robot With 3x AI Computing for Fully Autonomous Tasks". NVIDIA Blog. Retrieved 2024-10-28.
- ^ Heater, Brian (2024-09-12). "Face to face with Figure's new humanoid robot". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-10-28.
- ^ Oitzman, Mike (2024-08-06). "Figure 02 humanoid robot is ready to get to work". The Robot Report. Retrieved 2024-10-28.
