Sorcery• Apr 30, 2026• 33:00Interview

Inside Figure: The Race to Build Humanoid Robots That Actually Work

From Sorcery

Brett Adcock•Founder & CEO, Figure

Executive Summary

Figure AI's CEO, Brett Adcock, asserts that solving humanoid robotics will create the world's largest business, targeting a total addressable market of $30-40 trillion in human labor.
The company is aggressively scaling production, aiming to produce thousands of robots this year with a long-term goal of one million units annually, supported by nearly $2 billion in funding.
Figure pursues a strategy of deep vertical integration, designing all core components in-house to control its destiny and accelerate development, believing this provides a multi-year lead over competitors.
Adcock revealed that Figure terminated its AI model collaboration with investor OpenAI, claiming Figure's internal robotics AI team was significantly outperforming them, highlighting their focus on specialized, in-house AI as the core challenge.

11 quotes

Concerns Raised

Achieving hardware reliability at mass-production scale.
Solving 'general robotics' to create truly autonomous systems that don't require human intervention.
Protecting high-value intellectual property from corporate espionage.
Managing an extremely high burn rate and justifying a multi-billion dollar valuation before significant revenue.

Opportunities Identified

Capturing a significant share of the $30-40 trillion global labor market.
Becoming the first company to demonstrate capable AGI in the physical world.
Expanding from commercial and industrial use cases into the consumer home market.
Licensing their vertically integrated components or AI stack to other robotics companies.

Key Themes

The Trillion-Dollar Humanoid Opportunity

The core thesis is that humanoid robots represent the largest commercial opportunity in history, aiming to replace a significant portion of the $30-40 trillion global market for human labor. Adcock frames this not just as a business but as a fundamental shift in the global economy, promising revenues in the trillions.

This establishes the immense scale of ambition and the potential economic disruption that drives the high valuation and aggressive investment in the humanoid robotics space.

Vertical Integration as a Competitive Moat

Figure's strategy is to design and manufacture nearly every component of its robots, from motors and sensors to batteries. This approach is positioned as a key differentiator, enabling faster iteration, better system optimization, and control over the supply chain, which Adcock believes is crucial for outpacing competitors.

In a complex hardware and AI field, this strategy contrasts with relying on third-party suppliers, suggesting that deep integration is necessary to solve the hardest engineering and reliability challenges at scale.

AI as the Central Challenge

Adcock emphasizes that the primary bottleneck is not manufacturing but intelligence. The company's decision to end its collaboration with OpenAI and focus on its internal 'Helix' AI model underscores their belief that general-purpose language models are insufficient and that specialized, embodied AI is the key to unlocking autonomous robotics.

This highlights the debate over AI architecture for robotics and signals that leadership in the space may depend more on specialized AI talent and data than on access to large, general models.

Aggressive Scaling and Commercialization

Figure is moving rapidly from R&D to commercial deployment, citing a successful trial with BMW and plans to announce multiple new customers within 90 days. This is matched by an aggressive production ramp-up, with plans to 3x March output by May and produce thousands of units this year.

This demonstrates a clear strategy to be first to market at scale, capturing early customer relationships and generating real-world operational data, which is a critical feedback loop for improving both hardware and AI.

The Prolific Founder: Parallel Ventures

Beyond Figure, CEO Brett Adcock is simultaneously funding and running two other deep-tech companies: Cover, which uses NASA-licensed terahertz imaging to detect weapons for school safety, and Hark, an AI lab building personalized intelligence models and new hardware interfaces.

This showcases a founder operating at an unusual scale, tackling multiple capital-intensive, high-impact problems at once, and leveraging expertise across AI, hardware, and rapid company scaling.

Get started free

Topics

Humanoid Robotics Figure AI Brett Adcock Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)AI Models Vertical Integration Robotics Manufacturing Venture Capital Corporate Strategy OpenAI Microsoft BMW Total Addressable Market (TAM)Entrepreneurship Terahertz Imaging Radar

Processed Apr 30, 2026 yt-dlp + mlx-whisper + Gemini

You're reading a preview

Get started free →