Weekly recap
Figure's partnership with OpenAI, Robotics at nVidia GTC, and HRI 2024
Figure nets an impressive figure
This week has shaped out to be one of the busy weeks for robotics enthusiasts. The big news has been of Figure attracting a whoppng $650 Million of funding at a $2.6 Billion valuation to develop its humanoid robots perform many tasks in human-like settings. There are many things to observe from this level of funding support.
First its great to see such a massive funding round in a robotics startup. Given the scale of challenges Figure is up against, it may very well not see the light at the end of day. But just that big names are willing to consider the prospect of 10-20x return on investment in a humanoid robotics company is a milestone development in robotics. Venture capital investment in robotics has always lagged the software and chip sectors because of the very high risk and commercial uncertainity, and this funding round shows that the age of commerical robots has arrived.
Other than the funding news, the more prominent announcement is that of Figure partnering with OpenAI and Microsoft Azure for Generative AI. The announcement specifically says that “Figure signed a collaboration agreement with OpenAI to develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots”, and that “Figure will leverage Microsoft Azure for AI infrastructure, training, and storage”. We have discussed in past essays on how the world of Generative AI and Robotics will intersect… these announcement are a great validation on what many academics have been working on for a long time. Figure also gets a huge name recognition from the partnership with these big brands.
Safety and Reliability are the Key
We hope to see how Figure matures its technology over the next year. But as we have seen with self driving cars, the readiness of Figure will highly depend on the safety and reliatbility with which these robots can operate in the real worls. The Figure robot is designed to work on heavy duty tasks… it weighs 60kg and can lift a payload of 20kg. Something as heavy as that better not fall on a human. As we have seen with Cruise, one accident can torpedo the value and brand of a high-flying company. So if I were at Figure, my main focus would be on safety, reliability, and delivering concrete value in a small range of tasks. In this context, it would be interesting to see how Figure’s partnership with BMW goes.
It’s also interesting to see how this announcement is playing out politically. Figure is of course in competition with Tesla’s Optimus robot, which Elon Must espects to be a much bigger business in the long run than its automotive segment (Figure’s partnership with BMW is particularly interesting given the competition). Elon Musk sued Sam Altman and OpenAI the same evening as Figure’s announcement… and there is obviously a close connection between the two events given that the backers of Figure… Microsoft, Jeff Bezos (via Bezos investments), and Open AI have all been nemesis of Elon Musk. It’s sad to see legal wrangling and bitterness between people who have defied gravity to innovate… I hope that some settlement can be found without the bitterness exposed in the public eye in court proceedings.
Editor’s note: Did you know that Substack recently added a feature to DM authors. LearnWithARobot.com uses Substack in its backend, so we get to leverage the same facility. If you have a question, feel free to DM me using the following link.
nVidia GTC
Moving on to nVidia, who is also an investor in Figure, and which is in the unenviable position of being supplier of GPUs to both Elon Musk’s companies as well as OpenAI and Microsoft Azure. nVidia’s GTC Conference is occuring in a couple of weeks (March 18-21, 2024) and has a lot of content on how robotics and AI will intersect. There is a very interesting segment on Robotics in the era of Generative AI, which should be intersting to watch.
HRI 2024
Also next week, I will be covering IEEE Human Robot Interaction HRI 2024 (March 11-14 2024) (back to back covering conferences for me, sigh :( )… which will feature very intersting workshops such as one on how Generative AI will affect Human - Robot Interaction, cool social robots on stage, and lots of research from academic groups working on HRI. My live coverage of HRI2024 and nVidia GTC is limited to paid subscribers… so please take a moment to sign up to receive top content from these premier conferences. It is a privilege to live at a time when radical technologies are being built at a breathtaking pace.