Brett Adcock, 38, founder and CEO of humanoid robot startup Figure, has growing confidence in his company's robots, and for good reason. You can read more about  humanoid robot on this amazing blog SEOToolsKit.co.

In January, the company announced a collaboration with BMW, with the goal of putting its robots to work at a manufacturing plant in South Carolina. Then, on February 29, Figure raised $675 million (about 106 billion yen) at a valuation of $2.6 billion from Microsoft according to funkyadjunct, Nvidia, OpenAI startup fund, Jeff Bezos, and others. The company also signed a collaboration agreement with OpenAI to develop artificial intelligence (AI) models for humanoid robots.

The acquisition puts Adcock, who owns about 50% of Sunnyvale, California-based Figure, among the billionaires. The combined value of his stake in Figures and previous startups is estimated at $1.4 billion. Read more on cavalerie.net.

Adcock's company is aiming for a world similar to the popular American animated series ``The Jetsons,'' which depicts a futuristic society set in 2062. A future in which every person will have their own humanoid robot at home, and the robot will do small daily tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. "Humanoid robots will eventually become one of the most important businesses in the world," Adcock says.

However, before that dream can become a reality, the two-year-old company has many issues to solve. For example, the walking ability of the company's Figure 01 robot is still in its infancy, and as Forbes witnessed during a recent visit to the company's offices, it can only be connected to a cable for about five minutes before it starts walking. Need to warm up.

However, things don't go as planned. Midway through warm-ups, his hip developed trouble, causing his right leg to rotate violently at an odd angle. A few minutes later, two employees fixed the software and Figure 01 started walking on its own, the metal parts clanging with each step.

Robots have made great strides in recent decades and are now used for tasks such as assembling cars and moving cargo around warehouses, and in recent years there has been growing interest in humanoid robots equipped with AI.

There are many other companies working on developing such bipedal robots. Tesla has developed a robot called Optimus that it plans to use to assemble cars. When AI chip giant Nvidia announced a new initiative with robot manufacturers, almost all of the robots on display were humanoids.

However, it will likely be some time before Figure robots are fully deployed in the factories of BMW and other potential customers. Adcock laid out a very optimistic timeline, saying that the first robots will probably be working in BMW factories "in small quantities over the next 12 to 18 months"; A spokesperson said, ``In the first stage, we plan to introduce one unit for technical evaluation.'' Ashish Sharma, a robot researcher at the British research firm Interact Analysis, predicts that it will be five to six years before Figures commercializes humanoid robots. The big problem is making the robots cheap enough to manufacture. Adcock did not disclose the manufacturing cost of Figure's first robot, but the company aims to bring it down to "$50,000 per unit."

Born into a farming family, joined an investment company in New York

Born in Moweakua, a small village in Illinois with a population of 1,700, Adcock was the older of two children and grew up with three generations of farming parents. After earning a degree in business administration from the University of Florida, he moved to New York to work at a hedge fund called Cedar Capital Partners. In 2012, he co-founded Vettery, an online job marketplace targeting talent in finance and IT, with fellow University of Florida graduate Adam Goldstein. In 2018, Adcock sold the company to recruitment giant Adecco Group for $110 million, netting him an estimated $30 million before taxes.

Goldstein and Adcock then jumped into the world of electric aircraft despite having no prior hardware development experience, launching an electric air taxi company called Archer Aviation in 2018. They raised money from investors, including Marc Lore, who sold Jet.com to Walmart, and offered big salaries to attract top talent. Less than three years later, the company unveiled its first prototype two-seater air taxi.

In early 2021, United Airlines placed a $1 billion order for up to 200 Archer air taxis that have yet to fly . In September of that year, Adcock and Goldstein took Archer public through a SPAC (special acquisition purpose company), but Adcock abruptly left the company seven months later and the two have not worked together since. , doesn't talk about that relationship. A spokesperson for Archer declined to comment.

"It was a board decision, that's all I can say," said Louise Bristow, the company's former head of communications.

Adcock, on the other hand, tends to exaggerate stories. "I built five generations of aircraft from the ground up at Archer," he boasts, but building aircraft is a team effort, and the company hasn't built five generations of aircraft yet. He also claims to have founded and personally funded the Archer Aviation eVTOL Lab at the University of Florida, although the lab was actually founded in 2021 by Peter, a University of Florida aeronautical engineering professor.・It was launched by Ifju, and was funded not by Adcock personally but by Archer as a corporation, as well as a former partner at Goldman Sachs who served as an advisor to the company. "Without us, Archer probably wouldn't have happened," Professor Ifju said, explaining that his lab created the first prototype for Archer.

Friendship with Sam Altman

To launch Figure, Adcock, based at WeWork in Palo Alto, reached out to everyone involved in robotics. "Brett (Adcock) explained to us that we're going to get the best talent in the humanoid space," says John McCormick of Tamarack Global, an investment firm that invested in both Archer and Figure. .

By August 2022, he had hired eight employees, and continued to hire from companies such as Boston Dynamics, Google's DeepMind, Tesla, and Apple's secret EV project Special Projects Group. The current number of employees has increased to 90.

Adcock initially founded the company with his own funds. He did not say how much he invested, but sources say it was about $20 million. (In addition to the proceeds from Vettery's sale, he is selling at least $70 million worth of Archer stock). In March 2023, Figure raised $70 million from investors including Intel Capital in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital.

Adcock's industry network helped the company raise $675 million in February. Adcock said he was already close with Sam Altman when OpenAI approached him about investing in Figure. "I've been friends with Sam for a long time, and one day the OpenAI team, who were interested in robotics, approached me and said, 'You have the best team in the world,'" Adcock said. Told. OpenAI did not respond to Forbes' request for comment, but Peter Wellinder, the company's vice president, said in a press release about the funding that he was "overwhelmed by the progress Figure has made to date."

Adcock also said he had written an email to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and "we have remained in contact for over a year since then." (NVIDIA declined to comment.) In addition, Coors Blankenship of Parkway Ventures, who joined Figure's board of directors, said, ``Sam (Altman) was the one who brought all the parties together, including Microsoft, in the February funding round. '' he added. Figure's $675 million raise is significantly more than its competitors have raised. Founded in 2015, Agility Robotics has raised $180 million to date. Norwegian robotics company 1X raised $140 million, and Texas-based Apptronik raised just $29 million. Interact Analysis's Sharma called Figure's $2.6 billion valuation "a mind-boggling amount." But even with huge amounts of money, Figure's success is not guaranteed. Humankind has dreamed of developing human-like robots for hundreds of years. Al-Jazari, a 12th century Islamic inventor, developed a water-powered musical puppet that could float on a lake and play musical instruments automatically. 21st century technology has come a long way since then, but it may still not be enough.