Summary
Figure AI is a humanoid robotics company developing general-purpose robots for commercial and industrial environments. The company is one of the most visible startups in the humanoid robotics market because of its funding, technical team, OpenAI collaboration, and commercial work with BMW Manufacturing.
Company Story
Figure AI was founded in 2022 with the goal of building autonomous humanoid robots that can operate in human-designed environments. Instead of focusing on one narrow industrial machine, Figure is pursuing a general-purpose humanoid form factor: a robot shaped to use spaces, tools, and workflows originally built for people. The company’s own website describes its work around general-purpose humanoid robots for physical work (Figure AI).
The company sits at the intersection of two major robotics trends. The first is the push to commercialize humanoid hardware for manufacturing, logistics, warehouses, and eventually broader physical work. The second is the rise of large AI models that may improve robot reasoning, language interaction, and task generalization.
Figure’s public profile grew quickly in 2024 when it announced a large Series B financing round and a collaboration agreement with OpenAI (Figure funding announcement). The same period also brought attention to Figure’s commercial agreement with BMW Manufacturing, which positioned automotive production as an early testbed for general-purpose humanoid robots (Figure and BMW announcement).
Founders
Brett Adcock founded Figure AI after previously founding Archer Aviation. His founder background is one reason Figure is often discussed not only as a robotics company, but also as an ambitious hardware commercialization effort.
The company’s public materials and funding announcement describe a team with experience from robotics and AI organizations including Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Google DeepMind, and Archer Aviation (Figure funding announcement).
Products
Figure’s product direction is centered on humanoid robots. The company’s robots are designed to perform physical tasks in environments such as factories and warehouses, where a human-like form factor may help with stairs, tools, doors, shelves, workstations, and other infrastructure built around people.
The company has publicly demonstrated humanoid robot capabilities around manipulation, mobility, and AI-driven interaction. Its long-term product thesis is that a general-purpose humanoid can eventually be useful across many different labor categories rather than only one task-specific automation cell.
Funding
In February 2024, Figure announced a $675 million Series B financing round at a $2.6 billion valuation. The announced investors included Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Bezos Expeditions, Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures, and ARK Invest (Figure funding announcement; Reuters).
The funding round was significant because it joined robotics capital with major AI and cloud infrastructure companies. Figure also announced a collaboration agreement with OpenAI and said it would use Microsoft Azure for AI infrastructure, training, and storage.
Partnerships
Figure announced a commercial agreement with BMW Manufacturing in January 2024 to bring general-purpose humanoid robots into automotive production. The agreement focused first on identifying use cases, followed by staged deployment at BMW’s Spartanburg, South Carolina facility (Figure and BMW announcement).
BMW later described successful testing of Figure humanoid robots at Plant Spartanburg, including work involving sheet metal parts in the body shop (BMW Group). This made BMW one of the most important public examples of a major manufacturer testing humanoid robots in a real industrial environment.
Timeline
- 2022: Figure AI was founded.
- January 2024: Figure announced a commercial agreement with BMW Manufacturing.
- February 2024: Figure announced a $675 million Series B round at a $2.6 billion valuation.
- 2024: Figure and OpenAI announced a collaboration agreement focused on AI models for humanoid robots.
- 2024: BMW publicly discussed testing Figure humanoid robots at Plant Spartanburg.
Market Context
Figure competes in the emerging humanoid robotics market alongside companies working on general-purpose robots, industrial humanoids, and embodied AI systems. Its closest comparison set includes other humanoid robotics companies, but its business also overlaps with warehouse automation, automotive manufacturing automation, and AI robotics platforms.
Source Notes
This profile relies on company announcements, Reuters reporting, and BMW public materials. Funding and partnership details should be updated as new primary sources or reliable reporting become available.