Figure AI, a company that builds multi-purpose humanoid form robots recently raised $675 million in Series B funding, from major investors including Microsoft, the OpenAI Startup Fund, NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos through Bezos Expeditions, Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures, and ARK Invest. 

The funding will be used for AI training, robot manufacturing, expanding the engineering team, and advancing commercial deployment efforts. Figure, which employs top experts from Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Google DeepMind, and Archer Aviation, has also announced its first commercial agreement with BMW Manufacturing to introduce humanoid robots into automotive production.

Figure AI founded by Brett Adcock bootstrapped the company putting in an initial $100 million for twelve months and deployed Figure 01, a full scale humanoid Robot. In Series A the company raised $70 million last year. The company expected a $500 million funding at a valuation of $1.9 billion but exceeded that figure. 

Concurrently, Figure has entered a collaboration with OpenAI to develop advanced AI models for humanoid robots. This partnership combines OpenAI’s research expertise with Figure’s knowledge in robotics hardware and software, aiming to enhance the robots’ ability to process and reason from language, thus accelerating Figure’s commercial timeline. Interestingly OpenAI has also invested in 1X technologies, a direct competitor to Figure AI. 

To support its infrastructure needs, Figure will use Microsoft Azure for AI training and storage. Jon Tinter, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Business Development, expressed excitement about supporting Figure’s deployment of humanoid robots for real-world applications.

“Our vision at Figure is to bring humanoid robots into commercial operations as soon as possible,” said Brett Adcock. The company is starting with warehouse tasks in the initial phase and then towards wider acceptance and possibly the introduction of domestic robots. 

Currently the speed at which the robot is performing human tasks autonomously is at 16.7% the speed of humans. “We are scaling up our AI training,” Brett Adcock said on X hinting at further improvements.