Figure AI Raises $1B as the Humanoid Robot Race Heats Up

Figure AI has raised over $1 billion in Series C funding, pushing its valuation to $39 billion and solidifying its position at the forefront of humanoid robots and humanoid robotics technology. The round was led by Parkway Venture Capital and included investments from Brookfield Asset Management, NVIDIA, Intel, LG Technology Ventures, Salesforce, Qualcomm, and others.

Funds will be used to accelerate manufacturing at the company’s BotQ facility, enhance its GPU-driven Helix AI training infrastructure, and support real-world deployments of humanoid robots in both household and commercial settings.

Figure’s flagship Figure 02 robot is built around the Helix AI platform, a vision-language-action model designed to handle perception, planning, and control for complex, human-like tasks. Helix combines large multimodal neural networks for context understanding and real-time visuo-motor actions, supporting adaptability in dynamic environments. Figure’s roadmap targets production of up to 100,000 humanoid robots in the next four years.

Industry Landscape & Competitors

The sector of humanoid robotics and AI-powered robots is rapidly evolving. Key competitors include:

• Tesla Optimus, still in development for industrial and consumer scenarios.
• Agility Robotics, focused on logistics and warehouse applications.
• Apptronik, developing robots for manufacturing and logistics with significant industry partnerships.
• Unitree Robotics and UBTech (China), both scaling production and deployment, with UBTech also completing a recent $1 billion fundraising round.
• NEURA Robotics (Germany), investing €120 million into AI-driven humanoids for commercial use.
• Sanctuary AI (Canada), with paid deployments in service and manufacturing settings.

All are working to address automation in logistics, manufacturing, and service markets, with multiple firms scaling up for large-scale production.

Industry projections, sharply influenced by NVIDIA’s strategic outlook, point to AI and robotics infrastructure spending topping $3, 4 trillion globally in the next five years. With Figure’s funding milestone and commercial ambitions, the humanoid robotics sector is on track to shift from pilot deployments to mainstream adoption across multiple industries.