Apr 30, 2026, 9:01 AM ETInterview, Fireside Chat

The $10 Trillion Bet on Humanoid Robots | Figure Founder Brett Adcock

Core Objective: The founder identifies "solving the humanoid robot" as the "meta problem" in robotics, viewing it as a gateway to the world's largest business, potentially capturing nearly half of global GDP currently attributed to human labor.
Market Size Projection: The company projects a market capable of generating tens of trillions in revenue, leveraging tech sector valuation multiples (10-20x revenue) to reach valuations between $100 billion and $1 trillion.
Production Goals:
- Achieved record production levels in March.
- Target to triple production output by May.
- Short-term goal to manufacture thousands of units this year.
- Long-term ambition to reach one million units per year.
Technology Focus:
- Rejects tele-operation; the company's stance is that robots must operate fully autonomously and end-to-end.
- Targeting "general robotics," defined as a system capable of performing any task a human can perform without human intervention for 7–10 hour shifts.
- Believes the next generation of AI models (Helix 2) and hardware are critical to achieving commercial-scale autonomy.

Funding & Valuation:
- The company has raised nearly $2 billion in public funding.
- Current publicly stated valuation is $39 billion.
- The founder initially self-funded the company, accepting a burn rate of $1 million per month within the first four months.
Hardware & Supply Chain:
- Adopts a vertically integrated strategy, designing and manufacturing all internal components (motors, rotors, stators, sensors, kinematics, batteries) rather than relying on third-party vendors.
- Claims to be "a few years ahead" globally in terms of deploying humanoid robots capable of real-world, paid work.
- Hardware reliability has improved significantly from Figure 1 (frequent faults) to Figure 3 (faults occurring weekly across the fleet rather than daily).
Commercial Deployment:
- Successfully deployed a batch of robots to a commercial customer (identified as "BNW") for six months of daily operation last year.
- Plans to announce deployments to multiple new commercial customers within the next 90 days.
- Current commercial bottleneck is manufacturing capacity and scaling autonomous operations, not lack of demand.

Founder Background: Brett Adcock previously founded Archer, an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft company which he took public; he is now focusing exclusively on robotics.
Work Style:
- Prioritizes "product engineering" over traditional executive duties, working from the "bullpen" alongside engineers.
- Allocates time strictly between family (dinner/bedtime with children) and deep work on company problems.
- References Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos as inspirations for his "11 out of 10" competitive approach and extreme dedication.
Portfolio of Companies:
- Figure AI: Humanoid robotics and AI.
- COVR: A company funding and developing terahertz imaging radar for weapon detection in schools, based on technology originally from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
- Hark: An AI lab focused on personalized intelligence and next-generation AI devices/interfaces.

OpenAI Partnership Termination:
- OpenAI led the Series B round and brought in Microsoft/Satya Nadella.
- The partnership ended after approximately one year of collaboration.
- Reason for Split: The founder stated Figure's internal team designing AI models "ran circles around" the OpenAI team, possessing superior capabilities in training models specifically for robotics hardware.
- Conclusion: The founder terminated the partnership, self-funding the split to maintain control over intellectual property and direction.
Security Measures:
- Implemented strict physical and digital security protocols after discovering a drone monitoring the facility from a nearby building.
- Now utilizes "tented" glass and restricted access zones to protect high-risk IP.

Technical Difficulty: The founder describes the development of end-to-end autonomous humanoid robots as a "fun house of problems" and "never-ending," noting the task is comparable to designing a rocket engine or turbofan from scratch.
Reliability at Scale: The primary risk is scaling reliable, fault-free operation across thousands of units; as the fleet grows, the absolute number of faults rises, requiring continuous iterative fixes.
Market Timeline: While the space is competitive, the founder believes they are in "Chapter 1" of humanoid integration into society, with "Chapter 2" focused on massive scale deployment over the next few years.
Founder Health: The intense workload (100-hour weeks during development) has taken a personal toll, with the founder stating "getting the robots to do the things we showed you today has almost killed me."

Commercial Rollout: The company intends to scale robot deployments rapidly over the coming months, moving from small batches to tens of thousands of units.
Technological Milestone: The immediate future focus is solving "general robotics" (CAGI in the physical world) and proving robots can work autonomously in homes and commercial settings indefinitely.
Global Expansion: Future interest includes deploying robots in space (Moon/Mars), contingent on solving terrestrial reliability first.