Figure aims to ship 100,000 robots in next four years

Robotics startup Figure has said it could ship 100,000 humanoid robots in the next four years after signing “one of the biggest US companies” as its new customer.

The new partnership gives Figure potential to ship at high volumes, according to Brett Adcock, the company’s founder and chief executive, who shared the news in a post on LinkedIn.

The yet-unamed company is Figure’s second commercial customer after BMW, which it signed a year ago. The firm has been testing a fleet of robots in the German automaker’s South Caroline facility, where they’ve been tasked with end-to-end operations.

“Between both customers, we believe there is a path to 100,000 robots over the next four years,” Adcock said, which puts the company, which was founded only in 2022, among the most ambitious in the market.

Adcock expects the increase in scope to drive cost reduction and AI data collection. In addition to its robot deployment at the BMW plant, Figure had also started testing its systems with the new client, he said.

“Learning the use case with AI is the only path here as heuristics would be impossible to write. And every time I see these policies running, it feels like pure magic,” he said, adding that the robot was being trained to do work at “high speeds and high performance.”

Adcock only said the new client was “one of the biggest companies in the US” without disclosing its name. The three largest companies in the country by revenue are Walmart, Amazon, and Apple.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is among those who invested in Figure, in addition to the likes of Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

Figure said its focus is on commercial and home markets. “On the commercial side, our strategy is to stay focused on a small number of clients. Early on, it’s more efficient for us to grow vertically within a few clients than to spread out across many,” Adcock said.

The market of general purpose robots is expected to grow rapidly within the next decade. Human-like robots are built to perform diverse tasks ranging from warehouse work to retail and care.

Figure is considered among market leaders, alongside Oregon-based Agility Robotics. Tesla is also working on a general purpose robot, Optimus, and there are a number of contenders from China, including Unitree, Agibot, and Fourier.