Everyone expects that robots will eventually take most jobs, especially manual labor, but few realize how quickly this is becoming a reality. Robotics startup Figure has raised $675 million in a mega funding round that valued the company at $2.6 billion as leading artificial intelligence players line up behind its bid to accelerate the production of humanoid robots for commercial use.

The massive Series B financing comes from high-profile backers including Microsoft (MSFT), OpenAI, chipmaker Nvidia, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, and Intel’s venture capital arm.

The announcement follows Figure’s new video of its bipedal Figure 01 robot autonomously carrying out warehouse tasks like lifting and moving storage bins.

The cash injection positions Figure to scale up its manufacturing capacity and hire engineering talent to aid its push for deploying legions of general-purpose humanoid robots into industrial settings within the next few years.

What Exactly Is Figure Developing?

Founded in 2021 with an initial $100 million in seed funding from its founder, Brett Adcock, Figure is focused on developing fluid, nimble, and skillful humanoid robots that leverage advances in mechanical design, computer vision, and artificial intelligence.

The startup believes its robots can take over undesirable, dangerous, and repetitive jobs in sectors struggling with labor shortages like manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare.

Figure’s flagship robot, Figure 01, reflects a humanoid form factor featuring two arms, five-fingered hands, a torso, and two legs used for balanced bipedal locomotion.

This anthropomorphic design aims for broad functionality across tasks, ease of integration into human-centered environments, and more intuitive collaboration with people compared to industrial robots built for narrowly defined purposes.

Figure 01 incorporates custom high-performance actuators with integrated sensors across its joints for accurately controlling movement and responses to forces during object manipulation or transitions between poses.

Also read: AI-Powered Humanoid General-Purpose Robots Are on the Way – Here is the Latest Model

Onboard software handles perception, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), motion planning, and behavioral orchestration to enact fluid motions and reactions. Figure expects to expand these capabilities through collaboration with AI partners.

The startup has demonstrated Figure 01’s abilities through choreographed customer service scenarios like welcoming hotel guests and serving coffee, along with videos of early warehouse trials focused on grasping, carrying, and placing storage totes.

Figure 01 is currently tethered for communicating sensor streams and accessing supplementary computing power, though Figure aims for full wireless autonomy once all processing is embedded into the robot’s body.

“Our vision at Figure is to bring humanoid robots into commercial operations as soon as possible. This investment, combined with our partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft, ensures that we are well-prepared to bring embodied AI into the world to make a transformative impact on humanity”, Brett Adcock commented in the official press release that announced the results of the funding round.

Next-gen AI and Cloud Support from Microsoft And OpenAI

Under the deal coinciding with Figure’s latest funding round, OpenAI will collaborate with the robotics firm on developing language models and multimodal capabilities specialized for enhancing robots’ understanding of spoken and visual inputs, allowing more intuitive voice control interfaces between human co-workers.

“We’ve always planned to come back to robotics and we see a path with Figure to explore what humanoid robots can achieve when powered by highly capable multimodal models”, said OpenAI VP Peter Welinder.

“We’re blown away by Figure’s progress to date and we look forward to working together to open up new possibilities for how robots can help in everyday life.”

Figure also revealed an expanded partnership with its lead Series B backer, Microsoft, to leverage Azure’s artificial intelligence infrastructure and services for scaling data annotation, model training, simulation, and robot fleet management across private and public clouds.

The startup expects that the collaboration will accelerate the functionality and commercial rollout of its expanding line of humanoids beyond Figure 01.

Big Tech and VC Firms Bet On Robotics Breakthrough

The whopping $675 million Figure raised exceeds the typical amount of early-stage funding that robotics developers obtain and reflects rising conviction from venture capitalists and tech titans that humanoid robots are nearing productive real-world applications.

Corporate investment arms from Intel, Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft participated in the round, aligning with their AI and hardware aspirations. Meanwhile, lead backer Parkway Venture Capital and Cathie Wood’s high-conviction Ark Invest point to unusually long-term optimism around commercial potential.

Figure says that the new financing will support recruiting top-tier AI and roboticists engineering talent and investing in custom manufacturing equipment and facilities to scale up the automated production of its humanoids.

This comes after Figure signed a deal with BMW in January to bring an initial wave of robots into the automaker’s manufacturing facilities. It expects to cement further major enterprise partnerships in retail, healthcare, entertainment, and government sectors during 2023 and 2024.

The startup was founded by serial entrepreneur Brett Adcock, who has already exited successful startups like Archer Aviation, whose IPO raised more than $1 billion in capital after the company went public at a valuation of $2.7 billion in 2021.

Adcock bootstrapped the first steps forward for Figure pretty much by himself, contributing $100 million to push forward the company’s mission.

He leads a team with pedigreed researchers from renowned robotics labs across all of the best robotics companies in the world including Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, Tesla, and others. This collective expertise convinced backers of Figure’s potential to translate long-standing aspirations around multi-purpose humanoid robots into commercial reality.

Can Figure Realize the Humanoid Promise?

Along with high-profile yet immature humanoid projects from Tesla (TSLA) and Amazon-backed Agility Robotics, Figure is perhaps a more likely candidate to lead a new generation of robotics firms riding the recent wave of AI progress and renewed investor appetite to produce legions of worker-replacing robots.

This is driven by expectations that techniques underpinning chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT can be used to power virtual assistants and task-orientated humanoids with stronger reasoning, situational fluency, and adaption to ambiguity.

However, analysts caution that genuine generalized intelligence enabling robots to match humans across cognitive faculties remains years if not decades away, despite flashy demonstrations of narrow spectrum competency. For the sake of humanity, that’s probably a good thing.

Figure’s immediate priority seems centered on honing commercial feasibility through deploying robots specialized for standardized environments like warehouses rather than tackling full autonomy across complex settings.

Nonetheless, its backers are betting that improved mechanical designs and simulations combined with specialized AI, if not outright artificial general intelligence (AGI), can impart upcoming generations of Figure humanoids with capabilities approaching sci-fi visions of versatile multifunction workers and companions.

Automotive and electronics manufacturers may see a myriad of economic incentives toward automating production through programmable machines needing little human supervision across shifts. Meanwhile, retail, healthcare, and government sectors grapple with aging populations and labor shortages in industries relying on physical workload.

As a result, Figure looks well-placed to ride an uptick in corporate investment in humanoid robotics, even if full autonomy remains years away. Its execution, particularly it’s ability to solve challenges like overcoming hardware costs and software limitations, now becomes vital to seizing a market-leading position.