John W. Little

Figure just dropped a jaw-dropping progress update:

The thread linked above has a lot of interesting tech details but make sure to watch the demo video. A year ago I was telling people that these models would allow us to make 50+ years of progress in humanoid robotics in the next decade but it is increasingly looking like we’ll achieve that in two or three years. And if you think progress is head-spinning now (and it is) just wait until there are millions of these moving about the real world, learning every second, and benefiting from their collective experience.

Robotics and embodied AI just got a huge shot of energy (and capital) with Figure’s latest funding round:

• Investors include Microsoft, the OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions).
• Others include Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures and ARK Invest.
• The $675 million Series B funding round “will accelerate Figure’s timeline for humanoid commercial deployment,” the company said in a release.

The intrigue: Figure and OpenAI will also collaborate to develop next-generation AI models for humanoid robots.

• This will combine “OpenAI’s research with Figure’s deep understanding of robotics hardware and software,” the companies said.
• The partnership “aims to help accelerate Figure’s commercial timeline by enhancing the capabilities of humanoid robots to process and reason from language.”

Read the full story at Axios.

I’ve been tracking humanoid robotic startup Figure for a while but they are just now, thanks to a string of significant progress updates, starting to really grab people’s attention in a significant way. This interview with CEO Brett Adcock is the most revealing update that I’ve seen to date.

AI and robotics are enablers and drivers for each other’s development in a very profound way. I think we’ll see more progress in the next 3-5 years than we have seen in the previous couple of decades and the capability/deployment curves will just rise exponentially from there.

This is an interesting and rare peek at the progress of humanoid AI robotics company Figure.

Here’s a video roundup of the humanoid robot projects from Apptronik, Sanctuary AI, Agility Robotics, Tesla, Unitree, and Figure that I’m actively tracking. AI was already driving rapid progress in the field but recent advancements have pushed the financial incentives through the roof. We should start seeing significant deployments (beyond current pilots at places like Amazon) of this form factor within the next 2-3 years (China is leaning into this in a big way) which will should only serve to accelerate progress even more.