Brett Adcock, co-founder and CEO of Figure AI for Humanoid Robotics Startup, made a rare reveal at the Bloomberg Tech meeting on Thursday. The diagram was the subject of several news articles that recently questioned the progress it had with Marquee’s customer BMW. The figure was very opposed to at least one of these reports, and Adcock threatened to be published and sued the publication.
When asked about skepticism over BMW relations, Adcock responded with an explanation of the technical benefits of placing the robot on the factory floor, but did not provide details about its contractual relationship with BMW, as to whether it was a pilot or a company.
“We get a lot of value. It’s really important that we need to find a way to run the robots every day. We can see how well they are working. We can track all the metrics,” he said. Two months ago, Figure also released a YouTube video showing several robots operating at the BMW factory.
However, Adcock said Figure AI signed a contract with a second unnamed customer for the first deployment, a customer that Bloomberg reported as UPS.
Figure AI draws attention to the claim that AI-powered robots have human-like fine motor skills and can manipulate objects accurately. Despite releasing numerous videos of robots at work, the company has not performed live humanoid demonstrations.
Interviewer Ed Ludlow of Bloomberg pointed out that while two other robotic companies, Agility Robotics and Boston Dynamics, introduced the robots at the meeting, Figure AI wasn’t. “It’s not that we’re going to many events. “I think it’s a big waste of time. Frankly, I have to take my team here to take the robots here. They can be in the office,” he said.
Adcock confirmed that Figure AI expects to manufacture and deploy approximately 100,000 units within four years.
Scepticism about the figure’s commercial relationship came amid the company’s attempt to raise $1.5 billion at a $39.5 billion valuation, sources told Bloomberg.
TechCrunch reported in April that AI had issued a suspension letter to secondary market brokers and had requested that stock marketing be stopped because they were not authorized to do so.