Figure, a startup developing humanlike robots, has nearly quintupled its valuation to $39 billion in the wake of closing a Series C that it said surpassed $1 billion, an apparent acceleration of investor belief that human-scale robots are on the cusp of being economically viable in warehouses, factories, and logistics hubs.
The San Jose company will use the money to grow its fleet, build training infrastructure and push forward with large-scale data collection—three levers seen as key to transforming humanoids from compelling demos into reliable shift workers.
Why a $39 billion valuation for Figure matters now
In an industry whose long development cycles and high hardware costs have historically muted enthusiasm, a $39 billion price tag places Figure in rarefied company while marking a sign that general-purpose robots are now being treated more like foundational AI platforms than glorified niche machines.
The bet is in keeping with larger automation winds. The International Federation of Robotics said the world set a new record for robot installations and that the installed base in manufacturing is growing; however, logistics operators say they continue to experience severe labor shortages as well as high turnover on repetitive tasks. Analysts at Goldman Sachs Research have said that humanoids may become a multibillion-dollar category by the 2030s, as costs come down and reliability goes up.
Who invested in the round — and why it’s strategic
The round was led by Parkway Venture Capital, with participation from Brookfield Asset Management, Nvidia and Intel Capital, among other investors. Each comes with leverage beyond cash: compute, chips, real estate footprints and industrial relationships that can accelerate pilots and reduce deployment friction.
Brookfield’s exposure to logistics, industrial real estate and energy infrastructure provides ways to run at-scale trials. Nvidia’s participation underscores the compute-heavy nature of training and deploying high-capacity robot policies; Intel Capital shows the increasing value of onboard processing (versus just doing all processing in the cloud) and reliable edge-system decisions.
Figure has now raised almost $2 billion since it was founded in 2022, and this is its biggest financing round to date. The company’s short-term focus — scaling fleets, constructing training pipelines and collecting high-quality task data — has been set to the three bottlenecks which have limited humanoids’ progress: reliability, dexterity, and the ability to work autonomously across multiple environments.
From demos to steady employment for humanoid robots
Early-stage projects for humanoids are staking a flag in picking, packing, material handling and back-of-house operations where human-compatible form factors can assist with reach, stairs and existing infrastructure. Success will depend on multi-hour uptime, safe interaction with humans and the ability to work under cluttered conditions, glare and variable layouts.
That is where data and training infrastructure come into play: Operators need robots that generalize: pick the unfamiliar box, open the unforeseen latch, or recover gracefully after a trip. Developing those gets you into a mix of large-scale imitation learning, reinforcement learning in simulation, and tightly aligned vision-language-action models. The broader the range of data that Figure can capture from real environments, the more quickly it will be able to close the “last 10%” gap between a slick demo and a robust coworker.
Hardware economics loom just as large. Fit and actuators, hands, batteries, and sensing stacks must meet cost and duty cycles that generate attractive payback periods. All of this creates a market that expects an ROI in two to three years, which forces vendors to cut bill-of-materials costs while increasing mean time between failures and simplifying field service.
A crowded but quickening field for humanoid robotics
Figure’s momentum comes as activity increases across humanoids and related platforms. Agility Robotics has taken steps toward scaled production with its bipedal Digit and piloted systems in e-commerce settings. Apptronik and Sanctuary AI are targeting general-purpose manipulation with different design decisions. In the meantime, purpose-built mobile robots are gaining ground wherever a simpler wheeled device will do the job inexpensively.
Investors are essentially making two bets on a spectrum: humanoids as the flexible, long-term solution where environments are built for humans, and dedicated robots as the near-term workhorses.
The winners are going to be the ones who convert pilots into production contracts with reliable uptimes, clear safety envelopes and transparent unit economics.
What to watch next as Figure scales humanoid robots
Key indicators that Figure is translating valuation into value will be multi-site customer deployments, broader robotics work at each site with minimal teleoperation and consistent dips in per-unit costs.
Being compliant with existing industrial safety norms such as ISO 10218 and its technical reports will also be essential for working alongside people.
Figure has deep-pocketed backers and strong compute partners, which sets it up for fast iteration. If the company can leverage its data scale into durable autonomy and demonstrate ROI in automotive, consumer goods, and third-party logistics with commercialization partners (like DHL for warehouse robots), this latest round may represent a turning point where humanoids hop out of the lab and onto the loading dock.
