Figure AI, a robotics startup designing human-like bipedal robots that could one day perform human tasks, said Thursday that it has raised $675 million from high-profile investors, including Jeff Bezos. The company, founded in 2022, is now valued at $2.6 billion.
The AI master plan appears to be transforming various industries, “from corporate job roles (over 3 billion humans), to caring for people at home (over 2 billion), to caring for the elderly (~1 billion), and to building new worlds on other planets,” according to the company.
For now, the startup aims to get involved in sectors like manufacturing, shipping and retail, “where labor shortages are most severe.”
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Figure 01 in action. Credit: Figure AI
The startup’s first offering is Figure 01, a multipurpose robot that walks on two legs and has five-fingered hands. A video showing the robot in action highlights that it can walk up to a stack of crates, pick one up and place it on a conveyor belt.
A status update slide before the footage showed that the robot’s speed compared to a human is currently 16.7%.
“Figure 01 is completing completely autonomous tasks,” Figure AI wrote in the video.
Figure AI said on Thursday as part of the deal that it will work with OpenAI, the nonprofit behind ChatGPT, to incorporate generative artificial intelligence into its human-like robots. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft has made a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI and has also invested $95 million in Figure AI.
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Nvidia and an Amazon-affiliated fund are investing $50 million each in Figure AI, and Amazon founder Bezos has committed $100 million through his firm Explore Investments LLC. Amazon has seven different robotics companies in its $1 billion innovation fund portfolio, from Agility Robotics to Bionic Hive.