Microsoft and OpenAI are said to be exploring options to invest up to $500 million in a humanoid robotics startup, Bloomberg reported.
The tech heavyweights are in talks with Figure AI, which wants to “deploy autonomous humanoid workers” around the world, per its website.
A person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg that the funding could value Figure AI at $1.9 billion, potentially making it the first humanoid robotics unicorn.
OpenAI has previously invested in another humanoid robot startup called 1X Technologies, per Bloomberg. It’s raised $100 million to date, and the ChatGPT maker led its $23.5 million Series A funding.
Figure AI was founded in 2022 by CEO Brett Adcock, per an Axios report. He’s built a team of top roboticists from Tesla and Boston Dynamics – the company behind the robot dogs.
Robotics is poised to be the “biggest thing in 2024” aside from LLMs, according to Nvidia senior AI scientist Jim Fan. And the race to build the most advanced version seems to be heating up in a market expected to be worth $3 trillion by 2050.
Figure AI signed a partnership with BMW earlier this month, Adcock said in an X post. The German automaker will trial its humanoid robots in a South Carolina factory after seeing how they can be used to help with automotive production, per a press release.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk recently told investors in an earnings call that there’s a “good chance” it will start shipping some units of its own humanoid robot Optimus, also called Tesla bot, next year.
But it’s US-based rivals Agility Robotics and Apptronik have been nearing the finish line as they’re already got their robots being tested out in Amazon warehouses.
Microsoft, OpenAI and Figure AI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
