We may be getting closer to having human collaborators. Figura, an artificial intelligence company developing humanoid robots that can perform general tasks, raised $675 million in Series B funding on Thursday, raising a valuation of $2.6 billion. The company counts Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia and Jeff Bezos among its investors.
“Our vision at Figura is to bring humanoid robots into commercial operations as quickly as possible” – Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figura, – wrote in the statement. “This investment, combined with our partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft, ensures we are well-positioned to bring embodied AI to the world to make a transformative impact on humanity. Artificial intelligence and robotics are the future and I am grateful for the support of investors and partners who believe in being at the forefront.
The company has been operating for 21 months aims to develop humanoids that “can eliminate the need for risky and undesirable work,” it said, enabling workers to “lead happier and more purposeful lives.” Figure said it will exploit funds from the latest round of the project to scale up artificial intelligence training, produce more humanoids, expand its workforce and continue efforts to commercialize its robots.
Figurka, which includes experts from Tesla and Google DeepMind, also struck a deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI to combine its research with Figura’s robotics hardware and software to develop next-generation artificial intelligence models for humanoids. The partnership aims to accelerate the commercialization of Figure by improving humanoids’ ability to process and reason using language.
“We have always planned to return to robotics, and we see a path with Figure that will allow us to explore what humanoid robots can achieve when powered by high-performance multimodal models” – Pete Welinder, VP of Products and Partnerships at OpenAI – wrote in the statement. We are impressed with Figura’s progress to date and look forward to working together to open up up-to-date possibilities for using robots in everyday life.”
The drawing will also leverage Microsoft’s Azure AI platform for training and storage purposes.
