Figure is leveling up its humanoid robot business far more rapidly than any other robotics company I can think of right now. CEO Brett Adcock just announced it plans to begin alpha testing its robots in the home sometime in 2025 – that's two years ahead of schedule.
Adcock says the update to Figure's timeline is thanks to swift advancements in its Helix AI, which we heard about just last week. The Bay Area startup noted this AI brain was the first of its kind – a generalist Vision-Language-Action model, to be precise – to be integrated into a humanoid robot. The idea is to enable Figure bots to see what's happening around them, understand natural language, interact with the real world, and learn to do just about anything.
Important update: Figure is launching robots into the home
— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) February 27, 2025
Our AI, Helix, is advancing faster than any of us anticipated, accelerating our timeline into the home
Therefore, we've moved-up our home timeline by 2 years; starting Alpha testing this year pic.twitter.com/t1TU1TseJq
But that was last week. Yesterday, Figure said Helix had been updated to enable faster and more precise motion, so its bots could take on package handling and sorting tasks – a key capability that would make them useful in warehouses.
Figure had previously shown its robots performing household tasks in video clips – so today's news sounds like it's serious about sending them over to your place to help with chores soon.
It'll race against OpenAI-backed 1X, whose sad beige humanoid is destined for housework. The San Francisco-based firm showed its Neo Gamma robot cleaning, serving food, and carrying groceries in a video last week. However, it hasn't said when it expects to begin shipping robot helpers, only that it's close.
Also close on Figure's heels is Apptronik, which inked a deal with Google DeepMind last December to incorporate AI into robotic brains. Only yesterday, the Austin, Texas-based company announced its plans to put its Apollo robot to work manufacturing copies of itself on the assembly line. It too has home applications in mind, but those ambitions will likely be realized after it cracks warehouse and factory duties.
Source: Brett Adcock / X
