California-based Figure, a developer of humanoid robots, has secured $675m in Series B funding, an investment that values the company at $2.6bn. The two-year-old start-up is working with Microsoft and OpenAI to bring its hardware to market.
Microsoft’s involvement provides Figure with access to the cloud giant’s Azure’s AI infrastructure, training, and storage, facilitating the deployment of humanoid robots for real-world applications. By incorporating OpenAI’s research, Figure sees its robots procesing and reasoning from natural language processing more effectively.
Figure also recently inked an agreement with BMW Manufacturing for onboarding at the German car maker’s plant in South Carolina, where humanoid robots will handle repetitive and dangerous tasks. Figure also is working with Archer Aviation, Boston Dynamics, Deep Mind and Tesla to advance the manufacturing, deployment and AI training of its robots.
Proceeds from the Series B funding are earmarked for scaling operations and expanding engineering capabilities. Alongside Mircrosoft and OpenAI, notable investors include chipmaker Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.