“The home is coming,” Brett Adcock, the founder of robotics company Figure AI, says. “The home is like single-digit years away” from being a place where humanoid robots can do “useful work,” he said this week on Around the Prompt, a tech podcast. That is, first and foremost, thanks to advances in hardware, which have become significantly more reliable in the past decade. “You can’t get this done on like mediocre hardware,” Adcock said. Neural networks, the computational models that mimic the networks in the brain, meanwhile, have evolved to make humanoids a near-term reality, he said. Adcock referenced an update the company released last week for its humanoid robot, Helix, allowing it to complete an hour of “uninterrupted logistics work.” The robot managed packages on a conveyor belt. Adcock said the latest development shows that its neural nets are “approaching human speed and performance.” Investors, too, see promise in a future populated by humanoid robots. Figure, founded in 2022, has raised $2.34 billion, with $1.5 billion coming from its latest Series C round in February led by SaxeCap, 1802 Ventures, and Vegvisir Capital. The company is now valued at $2.6 billion, according to PitchBook. The company has also raised money from companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But Adcock — who previously founded electric aircraft company Archer and AI talent marketplace Vettery — said he put in a bulk of the initial capital.

Full report : Figure AI founder Brett Adcock says there will soon be as many humanoid robots as humans.

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