Figure's Bold Bid to Deploy Humanoid Robots at Scale
Figure has achieved a commitment of more than US$1bn in capital following its Series C funding round, taking its post-money valuation to US$39bn.
The latest round supports the objective of deploying humanoid robots in real-world settings on a large scale.
The investment is spearheaded by Parkway Venture Capital, with participation from Brookfield Asset Management, NVIDIA, Macquarie Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures, Tamarack Global, LG Technology Ventures, Salesforce, T-Mobile Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.
Figure plans to use the financial boost to focus on three areas: developing humanoid robots, enhancing GPU infrastructure for simulation and training and leveraging data collection to advance its proprietary AI platform, Helix.
Advancing manufacturing and deployment
Figure's capital raise is about ramping up manufacturing and the deployment of humanoid robots across residential and commercial industries.
This includes amplifying manufacturing capabilities at Figure's BotQ facility and assigning humanoid robots to assist with physical tasks in varied environments.
BotQ is the central production site for Figure's humanoid robots, built to mimic human actions and operate in real-world environments.
These robots are expected to support the workforce by undertaking repetitive, demanding or hazardous tasks, aligning with rising demand for automation solutions in sectors requiring both physical and cognitive capabilities.
In just three years, Figure has developed two generations of humanoid robots and is currently working on the third iteration, Figure 03.
Brett Adcock, CEO at Figure, says: "Figure's goal is to solve general robotics. This is a really hard problem.
"For the first time in history, the right technologies exist to make that possible: robots that can achieve human-level intelligence. Today, we're announcing over a billion dollars of funding. The team is in place, the robots are built and the path ahead is clear."
Enhancing Helix with GPU infrastructure
Part of the allocated funds will support building advanced GPU infrastructures, which play a pivotal role in AI progression by enabling the parallel processing of large datasets essential for model training at scale.
Helix, Figure's exclusive AI platform, manages perception, reasoning and control of physical robots, a concept referred to as "embodied intelligence".
By expanding the GPU capacity, Figure intends to enhance Helix's learning through simulation, enabling robots to better interpret environments, devise action plans, and execute tasks.
The methodology involves a "vision-language-action" system where Helix incorporates visual, physical and language inputs to understand and respond to instructions, adjusting to varying contexts.
Real-world data partnership with Brookfield
Figure's collaboration with Brookfield, a prominent global asset manager, marks a significant chapter in creating an extensive humanoid training dataset for Helix.
Brookfield, which handles assets exceeding US$1tn and manages 100,000 residential units, contributes as both an investor and partner.
The partnership allows Figure to gather substantial real-world data reflecting human navigation and object manipulation. This dataset is designed to pretrain Helix, accustoming the AI model to the environments and scenarios humanoid robots are likely to face, thereby improving their responsiveness in dynamic settings.
Brett explains: "This partnership marks a major milestone in our journey to build general-purpose humanoid robots. Brookfieldās scale gives us an unmatched platform to capture massive amounts of real-world, humanlike navigation and manipulation data across a variety of household environments necessary to unlock general-purpose humanoid robots."
Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt adds: "This approach to collaboration furthers Brookfieldās position at the forefront of integrating AI to drive productivity in real assets and business."
