Figure AI: Figure 03 and Helix, a general-purpose humanoid for factories and homes

Figure AI is an American robotics company founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock: it builds autonomous humanoid robots driven by Helix, its in-house AI. The third generation, Figure 03, already works on BMW assembly lines and is being prepared for household duty. Valued at $39 billion after a funding round above one billion dollars, the company sells nothing to consumers yet. Everything happens through pilots, partnerships and public livestreams for now.

Figure 03, a textile-covered humanoid built to live around people

Figure 03 is a humanoid robot wrapped in soft, washable fabric, with multi-density foam over pinch points and wireless charging. Figure redesigned it from the ground up after testing the two previous generations in warehouses: this version targets the home as much as the factory floor, with a camera system covering 60% wider field of view than its predecessor.

The hands carry most of the engineering effort. Each palm holds a wide-angle camera and each fingertip a tactile sensor able to detect 3 grams of pressure, roughly a paperclip. You ask it to clear the coffee table: even when its fingers hide the object, the palm camera keeps the grip in sight.

Helix 02: one neural network instead of 109,504 lines of code

Helix 02 is Figure's in-house vision-language-action model: a single neural network connects every sensor on the robot to every actuator, from legs to individual fingers. That network replaced 109,504 lines of hand-written C++ once required for walking, balance and grasping.

Its whole-body controller, System 0, was trained on over 1,000 hours of human motion data plus reinforcement learning in simulation. The payoff is a set of moves long considered out of reach for a humanoid:

• picking a single pill out of a container
• dispensing precise volumes from a syringe
• pulling one small metal part from a cluttered pile
• tidying a full living room, cushions and toys included (TIME still watched a prototype wrestle with a stubborn T-shirt, so laundry folding remains an elite sport)

From BMW's line to a live sorting marathon: where Figure robots clock in

Figure robots already work outside the lab. At BMW's Spartanburg plant, the company says its machines contributed to 30,000 vehicles during the initial test run, and a commercial agreement with Catalyst Brands (JCPenney, Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers) kicks off a deployment in Reno, Nevada.

The most telling showcase is the YouTube livestream: five Figure 03 units named Bob, Frank, Gary, Jim and Rose take turns sorting packages, with 238,000 parcels handled across 191 hours. In a ten-hour head-to-head, a human trainee won by only 192 packages. A useful yardstick for what repetitive-task automation looks like once the machine has two arms and two legs.

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