Figure AI comes out of stealth, raises $70M
Parkway Venture Capital led the round a year after founder Brett Adcock self-financed the company's first $100 million, days before its robot took its first steps.
- Money & business
- Minor
Humanoid-robotics startup Figure AI disclosed a $70 million funding round, its first from outside investors, led by Parkway Venture Capital with participation from Aliya Capital, Bold Ventures, Tamarack Global, FJ Labs and Till Reuter, chief executive of the industrial-arm maker Kuka Robotics. Founder Brett Adcock had financed the company’s first year himself with a $100 million seed investment.
The company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was roughly a year old at the time of the announcement and had been recruiting engineers from Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Apple and established automakers. Its robot, Figure 01, had at that point assembled its upper and lower halves and taken its first walking steps shortly before the funding news, which the company said was the fastest such timeline reported in the industry — though the robot had not yet been publicly demonstrated outside the company’s own offices. Its valuation was not disclosed, though a person familiar with the round put it above $400 million.
The round came amid renewed venture interest in general-purpose humanoid robots, an application area that had been largely dormant since Boston Dynamics’ commercial pivot away from research-grade humanoids. It was the first of several increasingly large rounds Figure raised over the following year as humanoid robotics attracted broader capital.