Meet The New AI Robot Billionaire

Armed with more than $750 million in funding, Brett Adcock vows that Figure will become one of the most important businesses in the world. First, there is a lot of work to do. Adcock, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of robot maker Figure, is riding high. In January, the company announced a collaboration with BMW, with the goal of putting Figure’s robots to work at the German automaker’s Spartanburg, South Carolina manufacturing plant. Six weeks later, Figure raised $675 million at a $2.6 billion valuation from the likes of Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI Startup Fund and Jeff Bezos. At the same time, Figure signed a collaboration agreement with OpenAI to develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots.

The valuation makes Adcock, who owns about 50% of the Sunnyvale, California company, a new billionaire. With his Figure stake and shares from a previous startup, he’s worth an estimated $1.4 billion.
Even with all the money in the world, success is not assured.

0:00 Intro
0:35 Who is Brett Adcock?
1:45 Building the Figure Team
2:18 What Makes Figure Different?
3:16 Figure 01 Demonstration
4:44 Training Humanoids
6:47 The Future of Robots

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[monkey_man]

The bot looks like it is coming along nicely.

Now all they have to do is Adcock.

[Venture_Fanatic]

The Labor Crisis is that not one of these Companies wants to pay a living wage for these 10 Million Jobs no one wants.

[DeZiio]

Then Boston Dynamics comes in and makes this tech look 20 years old

[glennalexon]

How big a share of an unprofitable company does one need to own to be called a billionaire by Forbes? Is this company the next Theranos or the next FTX?

[mylooooooooooo]

Brett Adcock is 38 years old! i thought he was like 24 :O

[theonemox]

The convergence of AI and robotics we are starting to see is gonna be epic... 5-10 years from now there will be intelligent robots all over society.

[jimj]

Look at his previous startups. He just rides hype waves and exits at the top. Take his previous company Archer: He tried to build E-VTOL taxis. He sold it to some gullible investors. Look around, there are virtually no E-VTOL taxis to be found.
The same will happen with Figure. He will exit at the top of the hype curve and the robot bubble will burst. All he is doing now is putting together all the existing tech to try to make investors think that innovation is happening fast. Nothing new is happening in his company. Once he sells, the apparent development will stop and we will be waiting many decades before humanoid robots actually become useful.
Elon Musk and many others do similar stuff too. It is all about trying to impress gullible investors and getting their money before the investors realize the tech will not really be there for another 20-50 years.

[ShahramHesabani]

I just hope we use them to solve problems and not create them. Advances in A.I surely can be debated for the good of humans, though most will argue that only a few will benefit especially to their pockets, at the end, interesting to see what the future holds

[Aspiiire]

This is truly the future of technology! Exciting times ahead for Figure and its CEO, Brett Adcock. Can't wait to see the impact they will have on the world!

[Konami]

4:55 why are there bananas lying around

[One_Fatal]

I like how they never talked about Optimus and how it will be much more competitive with mass production.

[MADMAX]

I'm getting Elizabeth Holmes vibes 👀

[LionMemento]

We are closely entering the terminator universe….

[crisperu]

People don't want these jobs because they do not pay enough

[ачр]

Dishwashers are likely to lose their jobs 😢

[WaldoTheWombat]

4:35 That's Ironman's reactor

[aelion]

3:33 'can you put them there'? The robot was about to say, 'idk can I? But he realized he wasnt sentient yet.

[esko_______]

>Brett Adcock: we are only going after low hanging fruit, we won't take significant jobs from humans any time soon
>also Brett Adcock: we are working with BMW on the assembly lines
well done

[CrispyDaFrog]

this video sounds like the kind of thing that would play on the radio in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world

[pennryan]

haha this person at 1:34 is rolling their eyes at their colleague