Figure AI

Figure AI is an American robotics company developing general-purpose humanoid robots designed to perform manual work in manufacturing, logistics and eventually homes. Its robots run on Helix, an in-house vision-language-action model that maps camera input directly to motor commands, letting a single humanoid handle varied tasks without task-specific reprogramming.^[1]

History

Figure AI was founded in 2022 by entrepreneur Brett Adcock. The company announced a partnership with BMW in January 2024 to deploy humanoids in automotive manufacturing, and around the same time disclosed a collaboration with OpenAI on multimodal reasoning for its robots. After the OpenAI chapter wound down in mid-2024, Figure brought model development fully in-house.^[2]

The Figure 02 humanoid followed in August 2024 as a second-generation industrial machine, and in February 2025 the company unveiled Helix, its proprietary pixels-to-actions VLA. In September 2025 Figure raised over $1 billion at a $39 billion valuation, backed by investors including NVIDIA and Intel Capital — one of the largest private valuations in robotics history.^[2][3]

Figure 03 (F.03) was introduced on 9 October 2025 as the company's first humanoid designed for homes as well as commercial work, built with soft washable surfaces, wireless charging and voice interaction. In June 2026 Figure reported that F.03 units had begun working at BMW Group Plant Spartanburg, performing dynamic material handling such as pulling heavy carts — and in September 2026 the company announced the decommissioning of the older Figure 02 fleet.^[1][4]

Technology

Helix is a vision-language-action (VLA) model that the company describes as pixels-to-actions: a high-level vision-language model reasons about a task in natural language while a lower-level control model streams motor commands, so a robot can be instructed with plain English rather than scripts. Figure 03's sensor suite and Helix 02 whole-body control allow hands, arms, torso and feet to be coordinated simultaneously, which is what lets the machine manipulate parts while stepping and repositioning itself — behaviour fixed six-axis robotic arms and traditional fixed automation cannot reproduce.^[1]

Why It Matters for AI

Figure AI is the leading private test of whether general-purpose humanoids can leave the demonstration stage and do economically useful work. If humanoids prove viable, the addressable market shifts from narrow industrial automation to physical labour in general, with implications for manufacturing, elder care and household work. It is also a marker of capital concentration: a pre-revenue robotics firm reaching a $39 billion valuation shows investors pricing humanoid robotics as an AI category rather than a hardware category.^[3]

>See Also

• Humanoid Robots
• Vision-Language-Action Model
• Physical AI
• Boston Dynamics
• Autonomous Vehicles