The robots are coming

If humanoid AI robot startup Figure was the new kid in school, it’d already have an invite to sit at the “cool” lunch table.

The startup has raised $675 million from Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Chat GPT-maker OpenAI, Microsoft, and others, it announced yesterday. The funding values Figure, which was founded in 2022, at $2.6 billion.

What’s the goal?... Figure is aiming to build human-like robots powered by AI that can perform dangerous or undesirable jobs, as well as be put to use in manufacturing, warehousing, retail, and shipping and logistics, “where labor shortages are the most severe.” Its machines aren’t intended for military or defense applications.

• The company has released several videos of the Figure 01, its general-purpose humanoid robot, performing tasks like making a cup of coffee or picking up a plastic crate and moving it elsewhere.

🤖 Zoom out: The humanoid robot industry is like Soho House on a Friday night – pretty crowded. Amazon-backed Agility Robotics is opening a factory that can produce up to 10,000 of its bipedal Digit robots per year. Tesla is working to build a humanoid robot (Optimus). And robotics company Boston Dynamics has already developed Atlas.