Figure AI completed a Series C financing round in September 2025, raising over $1 billion and valuing the American robotics company at $39 billion. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing and new investors including Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm, Salesforce, Brookfield Asset Management, Macquarie Capital, Parkway Venture Capital, and T-Mobile. The funding marked one of the largest private capital raises in the Robotics sector and was intended to accelerate production of the company's humanoid robots and the development of its AI systems.
The Series C came after a period of rapid expansion for Figure AI. Founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock, the company had previously raised $675 million in a February 2024 round at a $2.6 billion valuation, with backers including Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI. By the time of the Series C, Figure AI had introduced three generations of humanoid robots (Figure 01–03) and two iterations of its Helix vision–language–action model, which could control up to two robots simultaneously.
Funding Details and Valuation
The Series C round was announced in September 2025, with the company disclosing that total funding exceeded $1 billion. The valuation of $39 billion represented a significant jump from the $2.6 billion valuation just 18 months earlier, reflecting investor enthusiasm for humanoid robots and their potential to transform labor-intensive industries. NEA's leadership role was notable, as the venture firm had not previously been a major investor in Figure AI's earlier rounds.
Other participants in the round included Amazon's startup-funding division, Qualcomm, and Salesforce, alongside repeat investors such as Nvidia and Intel. The capital was earmarked for scaling manufacturing at the company's BotQ facility, which aimed to produce 12,000 humanoids per year, and for advancing its AI models, including Helix 02, which extended control to the entire robot body.
Strategic Context
The Series C took place amid a broader surge in generative AI and robotics funding. In the same period, other AI companies raised large rounds, such as Anthropic's $3.5 billion funding round and Databricks' $10 billion round in 2024, signaling strong investor appetite for AI-driven enterprises. Figure AI's focus on physical AI - combining machine learning with real-world manipulation - distinguished it from software-only companies and attracted investors seeking exposure to embodied AI applications.
Figure AI's partnership with OpenAI, announced in early 2024, had initially focused on developing language models for robots, but that collaboration ended after about a year. By the time of the Series C, Figure AI had shifted its emphasis to in-house large language models and high-rate robot control, a strategic pivot that Adcock described as addressing more critical technical challenges in robotic dexterity and autonomy.
Production and Deployment Goals
At the time of the round, Figure AI had begun commercial deployment of its Figure 03 humanoid, which featured 60 degrees of freedom, tactile sensors capable of detecting forces as small as 3 grams, and wireless inductive charging. The company had delivered a limited number of units to pilot customers in logistics and manufacturing, and it planned to use the new capital to increase production to one robot per hour by early 2026.
The BotQ facility, announced in early 2025, was central to these plans. The plant was designed to employ humanoid robots in its own assembly lines, a self-replicating approach that Figure AI claimed would reduce costs and accelerate scale-up. The Series C funding was critical to financing BotQ's construction and the associated supply chain.
Investor Confidence and Market Impact
The round's success underscored growing confidence in humanoid robots as a viable commercial product. Unlike earlier robotics ventures that struggled with high costs and limited capabilities, Figure AI's machines demonstrated practical skills such as loading washing machines, folding laundry, and sorting packages in demonstrations by early 2026. The company's valuation of $39 billion placed it among the most valuable private AI companies, comparable to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Investors were also attracted by Figure AI's potential to generate revenue through leasing and gig-economy platforms. In late 2026, the company launched a gig work platform called Index, which collected data from humans wearing sensors, and announced plans to spend over $3.5 billion on Nvidia GPUs in the following year. These moves indicated that the Series C capital would be used not only for hardware but also for building a data ecosystem to train AI models.
Comparison with Other Funding Rounds
Figure AI's Series C was part of a wave of mega-rounds in the AI industry. For example, Anthropic raised $1 billion from Google in 2025, and CoreWeave secured $11 billion in 2024. The $1 billion+ size of Figure AI's round was notable for a robotics company, which traditionally operated on smaller budgets. It reflected a belief that humanoid robots could achieve the same kind of exponential growth seen in cloud computing and AI software.
The round also drew attention because of the involvement of strategic investors like Nvidia, which supplied inference GPUs for Figure's robots, and Qualcomm, which had partnerships in edge AI. Salesforce's participation suggested interest in enterprise applications of robotics, while Intel saw Figure as a potential user of its computer vision processors.
Risks and Challenges
Despite the enthusiasm, Figure AI faced regulatory and safety scrutiny. In November 2025, a former head of product safety filed a lawsuit alleging he was fired after raising concerns that the robots' strength could fracture a human skull. Such incidents highlighted the need for robust safety standards in humanoid robotics, a factor that could affect future funding and deployment.
Additionally, the destruction of older Figure 02 units in arc furnaces in September 2026, to protect proprietary designs, raised questions about waste and environmental impact. However, the move, suggested by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a nod to his film Terminator 2, drew mixed reactions and underscored the company's focus on protecting its technology.
Outlook
As of late 2025, Figure AI planned to deploy over 350 Figure 03 robots by April 2026 and had announced intentions to lease robots for domestic use at around $600 per month by mid-2026. The Series C funding was a pivotal milestone, providing the capital needed to transition from prototype to mass production. The company's trajectory mirrors that of other AI unicorns, but its physical embodiment of AI makes it a unique player in the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and Robotics.
The success of the round also had implications for the broader humanoid robotics industry, potentially encouraging further investment in companies like Sanctuary AI and Tesla's Optimus project. For Figure AI, the challenge ahead was to deliver on its promises of reliability, safety, and cost-effectiveness, while continuing to innovate in AI control systems.
See Also
- Figure AI 2024 Funding Round
- Figure AI 2024 Series B
- Figure AI 2025 $2B Round (hypothetical)
- OpenAI 2023 Funding