Figure Founder and CEO Brett Adcock joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the company’s autonomous humanoid robots, the future of AI, and the impact of humanoids on the economy.
video transcript
– Acquisitions by artificial intelligence are escalating as tech giants such as Microsoft and Alphabet double down on their exposure. But one company is already taking it to the next level. Figure today announced a new round of funding to push forward with the development of its autonomous humanoid robot. Figure Founder and CEO Brett Adcock has joined Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Brian Sotzi.
Brett, let’s get straight to the point. Robot, what is its purpose?
Brett Adcock: Well, thanks for hanging out with me this morning. Figure has therefore designed and commercialized an autonomous humanoid robot. These are her robots with two legs, two arms and hands that can basically operate in physical environments similar to humans.
Our vision here is to bring these robots into manual labor. Therefore, we want these robots to perform real-world physical tasks such as warehousing, manufacturing, and retail. We see a huge amount of unemployment occurring. And it’s a flat line across the board, basically the working population. And we really hope that humanoid robots can help fill that void in terms of automation and perform dangerous, monotonous and tedious tasks.
Brian Sotzi: Brett, Brian, this is you. It was great talking to you. $70 million, that’s a lot of money. where are you going to spend Do you still have orders for these products?
Brett Adcock: First of all, today we announced a $70 million Series A led by Parkway Venture Capital and other really great venture capitalists and investors. He plans to spend the money in four areas over the next 24 months.
The first is robot development in general. We now have a fully assembled first generation robot that is now running the lab. We move on to the second generation. I am working on manufacturing. We build and design end-to-end AI data engines. And we are working on commercial major markets. On this subject, we are currently having some pretty in-depth discussions on bringing humanoids to some of the top U.S. well-known groups and those companies that are seeing significant labor shortages across dangerous and repetitive jobs. I am doing We can help you automate.
– Brett, I wonder why you have to be humanoid. In other words, think of an automated assembly line, for example. I think a lot of that is automated there by different types of robotic capabilities. When do you specifically need a humanoid? Here are some examples.
Brett Adcock: I think most things are relatively easy to automate these days. Walking through manufacturing facilities and warehouses, basically everything that can be automated is done.
I think the advantage of the humanoid is that they can do anything a human can do in the physical world. In the warehouse, this means manipulating shelves, moving goods, unloading trucks, unpalletizing, and restocking shelves. We’re looking at the workforce at the moment. Basically, the working population is trending flat globally. Demographically, baby boomers have retired or retired. We probably don’t have as many children as we would like. And we basically have a big problem with the working population.
That means there are about 11 million unsolicited jobs in the US alone. And we really hope that humanoids can basically move into a world built for humans and interact and work seamlessly with that world. So our goal is to put humanoids in these nascent areas and warehousing, manufacturing and retailing, basically to fill that workforce void. Over time, our humanoids should be able to do anything humans can do. It takes a lot of time and development to get there end-to-end. But that is our aspiration.
Brian Sotzi: Brett, we just displayed the graphics side by side. Your robot and Tesla’s Optimus robot. How far ahead is Tesla? Are they still ahead at this point?
Brett Adcock: I can’t say much about what Tesla does under the hood. But, at least for us, in December, full-scale development of the humanoid was completed. We just fully developed and assembled the robot a few months ago. And as of last week, we performed our first robotic steps. So the robot actually took its first basic steps in the office: the first baby steps.
Brian Sotzi: How was the atmosphere in your office when you saw it? That’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?
Brett Adcock: It was unbelievable. We worked very hard last year. And seeing something actually work digitally, say, from software or CAD to something like a physically embodied robot, was just a huge win for the team. And now, after this funding round, we actually have the capital to make a big investment on the engineering and product side. There are about 50 people today. And it’s probably one of the best teams in humanoid robotics.
We are all pretty fired up. And we basically have a vision over the next 24 months to demonstrate commercial viability. Finally, we will put it on the market and prove that humanoids can be useful to society.
– So I’ll go into more detail, or dig deeper into Brian’s question, but Brett, when you think about the competitive landscape, what does that look like to you? Then you think of Boston Dynamics. And now you have a Tesla bot. So how were you guys going to stay competitive with a power hitter like Tesla? Again, I agree. This is a little creepy for me.
Brett Adcock: Therefore, I think that the tradition and research and development of humanoid robots in the last 10 years have been very deep. There are many R&D groups such as Boston Dynamics and his IHMC. Honda had the ASIMO project. Toyota had a humanoid robotics project. For us, where are the commercial groups looking, who have hands that can walk and manipulate objects and move around the world, who have the right capital to actually do this? whether it has a reasonable commercial viability. put it on the market.
Currently, we believe that there are very few companies in the world that can achieve this. I think what Tesla is doing is great. We are watching and supporting you from afar. And internally, we feel we have an opportunity to demonstrate and commercialize this technology, hopefully within the next 24 months. I think this is really great. I think it will feel like being pulled into the future 50 years from now. And I think having humanoids in the economy is just a huge benefit. And we can really help fill a really big void in the economy that’s going on today.
– Brett, you’re probably familiar with Elon Musk’s fairly consistent comments about AI and the dangers of AI. And he’s not the only one. And in this conversation we often mention that creepiness. There was an unsettling quality to having a humanoid robot. If we introduce humanoid robots to AI, how can we reassure people about their psychological and emotional reactions to such things?
Brett Adcock: I think it starts at the top. Our goal is not to develop or design products that are fundamentally unsafe. We never do military or law enforcement work. I wrote this in my company manifesto. And we spend a lot of time on cybersecurity, the hardware side and the software side, to make sure we’re designing safe robots. We are ultimately designing electromechanical robots. So it’s fully electric.
I think this is about the same as not wanting to design a very sturdy robot. We basically want to design a robot that can do the bare minimum that a human can do, moving light loads or helping with tasks. So we’re actually designing labor tools. We basically want to help the world and design automation that can do all this in an economy that currently has no people.
It’s not like we’re putting people out of work in any manufacturing or warehouse facility today. We have a 2% weekly turnover rate and over 100% annual turnover. These jobs involve walking over 10 miles a day while picking 50 items an hour in a very hot warehouse. We feel that it is really necessary for society to solve this problem. And we expect humanoids to be able to interact with it. So our view is to design really important products, and really safe products that hopefully have long-term positive effects on humanity.
And I think there’s a real path to making that happen. But it should be done thoughtfully.
– And that doesn’t necessarily mean thinking for yourself and becoming our new robotic ruler. It feels like a service tool. A very interesting conversation with Figure Founder and CEO Brett Adcock. Thank you very much. And Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Brian Sotzi will join the combo. thank you.
