OpenAI is betting big on humanoid robots.
The ChatGPT creator has signed a collaboration agreement with Figure AI to “develop next generation AI models” for the robots as it believes they can “help in everyday life.”
In a press release shared with Business Insider, Figure AI said that the deal aimed to help “accelerate Figure’s commercial timeline” by enhancing the capabilities of its robots to “process and reason from language” using OpenAI’s research and large multimodal models.
Figure, backed by the likes of Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, also announced that it had raised $675 million in Series B funding, which it said valued the company at $2.6 billion.
OpenAI has made no secret of its belief that robots can reshape the future of work, leading a $23.5 million funding round in robotics startup 1X Technologies last year.
OpenAI’s chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, said at the time that the company believed in the “approach and impact” 1X could have on the future of work.
Peter Welinder, OpenAI’s VP of product and partnerships, said in the Figure AI press release Thursday: “We’ve always planned to come back to robotics and we see a path with Figure to explore what humanoid robots can achieve when powered by highly capable multimodal models.”
He added: “We’re blown away by Figure’s progress to date and we look forward to working together to open up new possibilities for how robots can help in everyday life.”
Figure AI says that its robot, called Figure-01, is able to support in areas such as “manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, and retail,” and it may help cover labor shortages.
According to data from the US Chamber of Commerce, there were 616,000 total manufacturing job openings yet to be filled in August 2023.
Last month, Figure’s founder and CEO Brett Adcock shared a video of Figure-01 operating a coffee machine, saying its AI learned by watching humans do the same.
Adcock said it was a “groundbreaking” milestone as it showed an example of “end-to-end” AI, where an AI model learns all the phases of an application, such as coffee-making, in one go, rather than sequentially.
“There is a path to scale to every use case and when the fleet expands, further data is collected from the robot fleet, re-trained, and the robot achieves even better performance,” he added.
OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, which was made outside of regular working hours.
