Figure Secures $1 Billion in Investment. Is the Mass Production Era of Humanoid Robots Approaching?

The working scenario of the Figure humanoid robot. Image source: JOHN KOETSIER

On September 16 local time, the humanoid robot company Figure AI announced that it had raised "over $1 billion" in its Series C financing. The funds will be used to expand robot production capacity, build NVIDIA GPU computing infrastructure, and then accelerate the training and simulation processes, as well as expand data collection for human work and life scenarios.

The ultimate goal is to mass - produce deliverable hardware, that is, robots; create an AI engine to make robots intelligent, and collect the training data required for the operation of this engine.

"Figure's goal is to solve the problem of general - purpose robots," CEO Brett Adcock said in a YouTube video that day. "For the first time in history, we now have the technological conditions to achieve this goal."

Figure has extremely ambitious aspirations. Its Figure 02 robot became the world's second humanoid robot to get paid work at the end of last year. Earlier this year, Adcock announced that the company plans to deliver 100,000 humanoid robots in the next four years and added that Figure's customer list already includes "one of the largest companies in the United States."

Figure's ambitions go far beyond warehouses and factories.

Figure regularly releases videos of robots working in the kitchen, serving drinks, putting dishes into the dishwasher, folding clothes, and performing other household chores. The core supporting all this is Helix AI - the intelligent system Figure injects into each robot. With Helix AI, Figure robots have the intelligence to adapt to the real world. They can recognize and understand objects they've never seen before and take wise and reasonable actions based on their cognition.

This is crucial for launching practical humanoid robots. By meeting this requirement, robots can complete auxiliary or work tasks without being specially trained for every tiny and extreme application scenario at home or in the factory.

"This is an extremely challenging problem," Adcock said. But he added, "The team is in place, the robots are built, and the path forward is very clear."

Of course, a financing of over one billion dollars will be of great help. Intel, NVIDIA, LG, Salesforce, Qualcomm, and T - Mobile all participated in this round of financing through their respective investment departments, but the lead investor was Parkway Venture Capital.

Recently, Figure is not the only humanoid robot company to reach a financing of $1 billion. It is reported that UBTech Robotics from China also completed a financing of the same scale earlier this month, but the company has not confirmed this news. Previously, UBTech also signed the largest publicly disclosed humanoid robot contract to date, worth up to 90.5115 million yuan (approximately $12.7 million), with the purchaser being Miyi (Shanghai) Automotive Technology Co., Ltd.

Humanoid robots seem to have a bright future. After all, the value created by manual laborers globally each year is as high as $40 trillion (half of the global GDP), which means a huge potential market for humanoid robots.

However, there are also some skeptical voices in the industry. Bren Pierce, a senior robot expert and the CEO of Kinisi Robots, is one of them.

Recently, he asked in a podcast called TechFirst: "What's the use of giving robots legs? Of course, there will definitely be bipedal robots in the future... But the question is, have we ignored the key factor for them to really function, that is, artificial intelligence?"

Bren Pierce believes that although the bipedal design looks cool, wheeled robots are sufficient in factories and warehouses and may perform better in terms of carrying heavy loads and battery life. As for the real technical difficulty, it actually lies in the "hands".

Nevertheless, dozens of manufacturers are fully promoting the R & D of humanoid robots and continuously receiving capital support in the process.

In a market where there may be dozens or even hundreds of competitors, Figure positions itself as an industry leader.

Figure founder Brett Adcock said in a statement: "This milestone is crucial for opening the next stage of humanoid robot development. It will help us expand our artificial intelligence platform Helix and improve the BotQ manufacturing system." He added: "The participation of new partners and the continuous support of existing investors not only highlight Figure's status as an industry leader but also reflect our common belief that in the future, humanoid robots will naturally integrate into people's daily lives."

With the continuous influx of capital, this day may come earlier than we expected.

The author of this article is a senior contributor to Forbes, and the content of the article only represents the author's personal views.

This article is translated from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2025/09/16/humanoid - robotics - company - raises - 1 - billion - for - nvidia - chips - ai - data - collection - production/

Original title: "Humanoid Robotics Company Raises $1 Billion for NVIDIA Chips, AI Data Collection, and Production"

This article is from the WeChat public account "Forbes" (ID: forbes_china). Author: John Koetsier; Translators: Björn & Rach. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.