Figure 01, can you choose a healthy snack for me from that basket?” Brett Adcock asks the humanoid robot lurking behind a table close by. Its options are an orange and a bag of chips. The robot–a.ka. Figure 01–picks up the orange using dextrous, human-like hands and gives it to Adcock. Then Adcock asks the robot what color shirt he’s wearing. There’s a 30 second pause before the robot replies, in a slow, deep voice: “You’re wearing a dark colored shirt.” It’s correct–if not very specific (his tee is dark gray). Adcock, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of robot maker Figure, is pumped about his robot, and for good reason. In January, the company announced a collaboration with BMW, with the goal of putting Figure’s robots to work at the German automaker’s Spartanburg, South Carolina manufacturing plant. Six weeks later, Figure raised $675 million at a $2.6 billion valuation from the likes of Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI Startup Fund and Jeff Bezos. At the same time, Figure signed a collaboration agreement with OpenAI to develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots. The valuation makes Adcock, who owns about 50% of the Sunnyvale, California company, a new billionaire. With his Figure stake and shares from a previous startup, he’s worth an estimated $1.4 billion. The company has Jetsons-like ambitions: a future where every human will have their own humanoid robot, or maybe two, “to do work…do the laundry, make coffee, cook dinner.” According to its founder, that’ll pay off big time. “This will be over time one of the most important businesses in the world,” Adcock says. “The goal is to be a generalizable replacement for human labor.”
Full profile : This New AI-Robot Billionaire Has Big Backers-And Big Plans.
