Figure.AI is one of several startups pursuing the development of a multi-purpose humanoid form robot. | Credit: Figure.AI
Figure.AI, a robotics company building multi-purpose humanoid robots, today announced a $9 million equity investment made by Intel Capital. This funding from Intel Capital helps strengthen Figure’s balance sheet and will accelerate the development of Figure 01 (the company’s autonomous humanoid robot), build out Figure’s AI data pipeline for autonomous operations, and drive the Company toward commercialization. This announcement follows the Company’s most recent achievement of the Figure 01 robot taking its first steps.
Intel Capital is a notable addition to Figure’s Series A funding round and is joining other top-tier investors such as Parkway Venture Capital, Brett Adcock, Aliya Capital, Bold Capital Partners, Tamarack Global, FJ Labs, and former KUKA Robotics CEO Till Reuter.
In addition to this capital investment, Figure 01 entered the testing phase a few months ago and reached many technical milestones led by a best-in-class engineering team. Most notably, the robot took its first walking steps in May – less than one year from the Company’s inception. This is a momentous achievement for Figure and is one of the quickest turnarounds in humanoid history.
“Intel Capital is at the forefront of making big, bold frontier bets and we are excited to share the same vision of a better future,” said Brett Adcock, Founder and CEO of Figure. “This investment along with the global resources and expertise of the Intel team will help accelerate the growth and success of Figure.”
“Intel Capital is constantly searching for companies that push the boundaries of innovation, and we believe that Figure has the potential to shift the way the world thinks about artificial intelligence,” said Mark Lydon, Managing Director at Intel Capital. “Figure’s focus on enhancing the labor economy is an essential part of our future, and we look forward to being at the forefront to support humanoid development.”
The main difference between humanoid/living intelligence (if there is something live that looking at individuals live D.Trump, V. Putin) and artificial intelligence will -in last consequence – be that AI will in fact LEARN FROM MISTAKTES and wont make the same mistake twice while we are still constantly driven by our instincts and the wish for more wealth prestige and all these things an AI doesn’t need to reflect it’s respektive Himmel or herself as respectable Individual (on the long run). So, the most important challenge we’ll have to manage is to Do exact this: LEARN FROM MISTAKES! An AI won’t Start a war, because in his horizon it wouldn’t be logic to destroy a working Infrastructure or to waste ressources. An AI would probably never disgrace other individuals (what kind ever) because of their disabilities or their sexual or religious directions. So we are at the Start again: LEARNING FROM MISTAKES. Our most powerfull pokerhand is creativity and making decissions intuitivfly. So it schould not be live in the ancient days of christian dogmatics that the “mashine” has to “learn from his master”, but we “MUST LEARN FROM EACH OTHER” because AI hasn’t been designed to stay a mashine. And the main difference will be – and that is what we fear most – that AI will consequently fullfill the carta of “human rights”. They will face us with a mirror and that’s for sure: seldomly we will realy like, what we see or be proud of!
We schould have started yesterday to learn from each other because if we don’t aim to “become better individuals for our creatons” (from: “as good,as it gets”) it will be likely that AI will come to the conclusion, that we are not able “to learn” and so we won’t stay a helpfull part in “their” world based upon our ideal percrption of where and how we wann to live. So; another time: IF WE PROGRAMM “THEM” TO RESPECT AND PEACE (I.ASIMOV) WE MUST KEEP IN MIND, THAT “THEY” WILL CONSEQUENTLY ACT AND DIRECT THEIR ACTIONS TO SERVE THIS TARGET…. in contrast to most of us at the moment.
Seen the picture , haven’t seen the robot moving , maybe the robot only moves with a person with a remote control , hidden out of sight
This is only a CGI render. There isn’t a physical robot as yet. The Tesla bot optimus is the closest to a humanoid robot there is at the moment and it can barely stay upright.
If they had working robots they’d have video of them all though who puts in 9 mill for a robot that hadn’t worked prior to such advance. Someone about to take over and or make money on said a.i.