Brett Adcock, co-founder and CEO of humanoid robotics firm Figure AI, made an uncommon public appearance at the Bloomberg Tech conference this Thursday, amid rising skepticism over his company’s high-profile partnership with BMW. Recently, Figure AI has been under scrutiny in several reports questioning both its business relationships and technological capabilities. The criticism has touched a nerve within the company, prompting Adcock to publicly threaten legal action over at least one critical media piece.
During a direct stage interview, Adcock was asked specifically about Figure AI’s relationship with BMW. He did not clarify whether the venture with BMW was primarily exploratory or whether the automotive giant has committed commercially, despite the company having showcased footage of its robots at work in BMW’s factories. Emphasizing only the benefits of having humanoid robots integrated into factory environments, Adcock noted that observing daily robot performance and collecting detailed metrics was valuable enough on its own—without elaborating on the contractual specifics of their arrangement.
Adcock also acknowledged that Figure AI recently secured a second customer, though he declined to name them directly, confirming only that an agreement was in place for initial deployments. According to earlier reports, that partner may be shipping giant UPS.
Figure AI has drawn significant attention within the robotics community for bold claims about its humanoid robots’ capabilities, particularly their reportedly sophisticated fine motor skills that rival human dexterity. However, despite numerous promotional video demonstrations, Figure AI has yet to perform any live public demonstrations of its robots. Confronted on this point, particularly since competing companies like Agility Robotics and Boston Dynamics took the opportunity to showcase their robots at the event, Adcock described live conference demos as “a giant waste of time.” He argued that live showing required considerable effort and pulled engineers away from crucial development work that could be conducted back at the office.
The CEO also confirmed an ambitious goal to manufacture and deploy approximately 100,000 robot units within four years. This claim and Figure AI’s reluctance to publicly showcase its robots come in the context of reports that the startup is currently pursuing an aggressive funding round of around $1.5 billion at a strikingly high valuation—around $39.5 billion, significantly up from its $2.6 billion valuation just last year.
In addition, recent reports indicated that Figure AI had taken steps to halt unauthorized trading and marketing of its shares, sending cease-and-desist letters to secondary market brokers to deter them from marketing company stock without proper authorization.
