Figure AI
Figure AI, founded by Brett Adcock in 2022, builds general-purpose humanoids and the Helix vision-language-action model. It raised over USD 1 billion in a Series C in September 2025 at a USD 39 billion valuation and opened the BotQ factory for Figure 03. BMW was its first announced customer.
- Type
- startup
- Headquarters
- San Jose, California, United States
- Founded
- 2022
- Founders
- Brett Adcock
- Status
- active
- Employees (est.)
- 600
- Disclosed funding
- $1.8B
- Valuation
- $39B (Sep 2025)
- Listed
- private
- Website
- figure.ai
What the record says.
Figure AI was founded in 2022 in San Jose, California, by Brett Adcock, who earlier founded Vettery and Archer Aviation and put USD 20 million of his own money into a USD 70 million first round in May 2023. A USD 675 million round in February 2024 at USD 2.6 billion brought in Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, Amazon and OpenAI. In September 2025 a Series C of over USD 1 billion led by Parkway Venture Capital valued the company at USD 39 billion, a 15x step-up in nineteen months.
Hardware went from the tethered Figure 01 prototype to Figure 02 in August 2024 and Figure 03 in October 2025, built for volume at the BotQ plant announced in March 2025 with a target of 12,000 units a year. Control comes from Helix, an in-house vision-language-action model; Helix 02 in January 2026 claimed full-body autonomy.
The headline customer is BMW's Spartanburg plant, where Figure 02 units loaded parts; Figure says they contributed to 30,000 cars. In April 2026 the company said it had delivered over 350 Figure 03 units, and in June 2026 Adcock said the fleet exceeded 700 robots against about 600 staff. How many sit with paying customers rather than inside Figure is undisclosed. A home leasing offer and a Figure 04 design were announced for later in 2026.
3 humanoids tracked.
Figure 01
Figure 01 was Figure AI's first humanoid, shown walking in October 2023 and demonstrated with OpenAI's vision-language model in March 2024. It was 168 cm tall, 60 kg, with a 20 kg payload and five-hour runtime. It established the company and led to the BMW agreement in January 2024.
Figure 02
Figure 02, unveiled on 6 August 2024, added onboard speech, six cameras, 16 DoF hands and three times the compute of Figure 01. It became the first Figure robot to work in a customer plant, at BMW Spartanburg, and the platform for the Helix vision-language-action model. Figure retired it in favour of Figure 03 in late 2025.
Figure 03
Figure 03 is Figure AI's third-generation humanoid, unveiled on 9 October 2025 and designed for the home and for volume manufacturing at Figure's BotQ facility. It has soft textile coverings, wireless charging, palm cameras and tactile fingertips, and runs the Helix model onboard. It is the company's first robot designed for mass production rather than hand assembly.
Rounds and valuations.
| Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Lead | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Sep 2025 | Series C | $1.0B | $39B | Parkway Venture Capital | Figure said the round was over USD 1 billion; the post-money valuation of USD 39 billion was a 15x step up from the Series B. Brookfield also agreed to supply a large-scale pretraining dataset from its real-estate portfolio. |
| 29 Feb 2024 | Series B | $675M | $2.6B | Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia | Announced together with a collaboration agreement with OpenAI on AI models for humanoids (the OpenAI collaboration was ended by Figure in February 2025). No single lead was named. |
| 12 Jul 2023 | strategic | $9.0M | n/d | Intel Capital | Extension of the Series A by Intel Capital; reported figure, amount taken from company statements at the time. |
| 24 May 2023 | Series A | $70M | n/d | Parkway Venture Capital | First institutional round, announced with the Figure 01 prototype program. Valuation not disclosed. |
* reported, not confirmed by the company.
At customer sites.
Milestones.
Figure unveils Figure 03
Figure 03 is designed for Helix and for home use, with a soft textile cover, wireless charging feet, palm cameras, tactile fingertips and a body designed for mass manufacturing at BotQ. Figure says it is 9 percent lighter than Figure 02.
Figure raises over 1 billion dollars at a 39 billion valuation
Parkway Venture Capital leads the Series C, with Nvidia, Brookfield, Intel Capital, LG Technology Ventures, Macquarie, Qualcomm Ventures, Salesforce and T-Mobile Ventures. The valuation is fifteen times the 2024 Series B.
Figure announces BotQ, a factory for 12,000 humanoids a year
Figure says its BotQ facility will initially produce up to 12,000 robots a year with a path to 100,000 over four years, using robots to build robots. It positions manufacturing capacity as the next bottleneck.
Figure publishes Helix, a vision language action model for humanoids
Helix runs a slow 7 billion parameter vision language model and a fast 80 Hz control policy on the robot's embedded GPUs and controls the whole upper body, including two robots cooperating on grocery tasks. It is the first humanoid VLA shown handling novel objects from language commands.
Figure ends its collaboration with OpenAI
Brett Adcock announces Figure is exiting its OpenAI agreement because of a breakthrough in fully in house AI. Two weeks later Figure publishes Helix.
Figure unveils Figure 02
Figure 02 has a redesigned exoskeleton body, six cameras, 16 degree of freedom hands, a 2.25 kWh battery, onboard vision language model and speech. Figure says it has been tested at BMW Spartanburg.
Figure 01 talks and hands over an apple in an OpenAI powered demo
A video shows Figure 01 describing what it sees, handing an apple to a person and putting away dishes while explaining itself, using an OpenAI vision language model and Figure's neural network policies. The clip becomes the reference demo for language driven humanoids.
Figure raises 675 million dollars at a 2.6 billion valuation
Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, Intel Capital and others back the Series B, and Figure announces a collaboration with OpenAI to develop AI models for its robots. It is the largest humanoid round to date.
Figure signs BMW as its first commercial customer
Figure and BMW Manufacturing agree to deploy humanoids at the Spartanburg plant in South Carolina. It is the first announced automotive customer for a general purpose humanoid startup.
Figure raises a 70 million dollar Series A
Figure closes a Series A led by Parkway Venture Capital, the first large venture round of the new humanoid wave. Later 2023 investors include Intel Capital.
Figure AI comes out of stealth with Figure 01
Figure reveals its existence and its first prototype, Figure 01, and states the goal of a commercially viable general purpose humanoid. Within a year it raises hundreds of millions and signs BMW.
Figure AI is founded
Brett Adcock, founder of Vettery and Archer Aviation, founds Figure AI in Sunnyvale, California to build a general purpose humanoid. The company comes out of stealth in March 2023.
In the news.
Figure AI: what $39 billion has shown so far
Four rounds, $1,754,000,000 raised, one named customer, no price and no unit count. The record on the most valuable humanoid company, generation by generation.
How a humanoid robot works: actuators, compute, sensors and the model
Of 182 humanoids on record, 178 say what moves the joints and 43 say what computer is inside. The further a layer sits from the metal, the less the maker tells you about it.
How long does a humanoid robot actually run
22 of 182 humanoids on record quote a runtime. The claims run from 1 to 8 hours with a median of 4, and of the 44 machines you can order, 4 say anything at all.
Startups, automakers, universities: who builds humanoids
108 makers, nine kinds. Startups hold 37 of the 44 humanoids you can order. Automakers, universities, big tech, conglomerates and NASA hold 45 robots between them and sell none of them.
Who is paying for humanoids: 69 funding rounds
Our funding record holds 69 entries. Take out the government funds, the acquisitions and the IPOs and $6.33 billion of disclosed private money remains. 37 percent of it went to companies with no robot on record.
44 you can order, 138 you cannot: the gap explained
We keep a record of 182 humanoid robots. Fewer than a quarter of them will sell you one, and of those, only eight tell you the price on their own website. Here is where the rest went.
Sources
- 01Figure AIFigure AI
- 02Figure AIWikipedia
- 03Figure newsFigure AI
- 04