Figure: a humanoid that promised homes and worked in a car plant

A humanoid company worth $39 billion within three years

Figure AI is a California humanoid company that Brett Adcock founded in 2022. Its first model, Figure 01, stood 5 ft 6 in, weighed 60 kg and could carry 20 kg. The company raised $70 million in 2023. In February 2024 it raised $675 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia and Microsoft, and agreed to work with OpenAI. A round in September 2025 valued it at $39 billion.

One robot at BMW, and two accounts of it

The place Figure robots actually worked was BMW’s Spartanburg plant in the US. In April 2025 Fortune reported, based on BMW’s account, that only one robot worked there at a time, and only outside production hours until around March 2025. That differed from Adcock’s talk of a fleet of robots doing whole operations. In November 2025 Figure retired its Figure 02 robots from the plant, saying they had helped build more than 30,000 X3s. In June 2026 BMW called the pilot a success and said Figure 03 would start on a logistics task. In October 2026, however, Forbes reported BMW as saying no Figure robot was currently working at the plant.

Figure 03 in soft covers, and homes still waiting

In February 2025 Figure ended its OpenAI collaboration and introduced its own AI model, Helix. That month Adcock said home testing would begin in 2025. Figure 03, unveiled in October 2025, was designed for homes. Its body is wrapped in soft textiles with washable, removable covers. It charges wirelessly through its feet and has foam at pinch points. No price or release date was given. In November 2025 the former head of product safety sued, saying he was fired after warning that the robots were strong enough to fracture a human skull. The company said he was fired for poor performance. In BMW’s release Adcock said the 11-month deployment of Figure 02 “proved that humanoids are no longer lab experiments.”

The distance between funding and the field

Figure is better known for its funding figures and videos than for its field record. Its one confirmed deployment is a pilot at a single plant, and the company and its customer described even that differently. Figure 03 for the home faced safety questions before it reached any home. As with NEO and Optimus, the home humanoid remains a promise.

Who should disclose the strength and safety of a robot meant to work beside people, and how?

What we haven’t confirmed

• How many robots worked at the BMW plant, and whether BMW paid for them
• How long the BMW pilot ran (BMW’s own release says both ten and eleven months)
• How many robots have been built and where they work (about 1,000 is confirmed only by the Forbes report)
• The status of the former safety head’s lawsuit