Microsoft OpenAI plans to invest $100 million in humanoid robots! Netizens are calling Musk

Microsoft and OpenAI were revealed to be investing large sums of money into a humanoid robot startup at the beginning of the year.

Among them, Microsoft plans to invest US$95 million, and OpenAI will invest US$5 million.

Bloomberg news said that the company is expected to raise a total of US$500 million in this round, and its pre-money valuation may reach US$1.9 billion.

What attracts them? Let’s take a look at this company’s robotics achievements first.

This robot is all silver and black, and its appearance resembles the robot image in Hollywood science fiction blockbusters:

Now, he is putting a coffee capsule into it In the coffee machine:

#If the position is not correct, it will be adjusted automatically without any human remote control:

But after a while, a cup of coffee can be taken away and enjoyed:

Have any family members recognized it? Yes, this robot became popular some time ago Figure 01, the company behind it is also the robotics startup Figure.

This company was founded in 2022. In May last year, it just raised US$70 million in financing led by Parkway Venture Capital. Two months later, Intel invested US$9 million. Unexpectedly, it took less than a year. The company's valuation has doubled again.

However, this latest round of financing has not yet been finalized, the investment amount may change, and the transaction may not be completed.

Even so, netizens have already started calling Musk:

There must be a cage fight between Optimus Prime and Figure 01.

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Some netizens seemed to feel a sense of crisis:

OpenAI plans to use various methods to Affecting blue-collar jobs.

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"Building Figure with a 30-year long-term perspective"

As mentioned above, Figure is A start-up robotics company based in the United States that specializes in general-purpose humanoid robots.

The company’s founder and CEO is Brett Adcock.

Before founding Figure, Brett founded Archer Aviation, a company that makes all-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Archer Aviation has been publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of US$2.7 billion and has signed a US$1.5 billion commercial agreement with United Airlines.

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Pushing forward further, at the age of 26, Brett founded Vettery, a headhunting company. In 2018, Vettery was acquired by the Swiss Adecco Group for US$110 million.

Now, Brett writes in his personal introduction on his company homepage:

The only focus is to build Figure with a 30-year perspective to positively impact the future of mankind.

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The first humanoid robot released by Figure, Figure 01, was released in October last year.

According to reports, its power is that it can learn and complete tasks such as making coffee completely autonomously by watching human demonstration videos and only 10 hours of end-to-end training.

As for the specific implementation details, the official has not disclosed it.

OpenAI also supports another company

In addition, OpenAI has also made many deployments in humanoid robots.

They also provided support for 1X Technologies, a Norwegian humanoid robotics company.

1X Technologies, formerly known as Halodi Robotics, was founded 10 years ago by Bernt Øivind Børnich. In 2022, 1X Technologies reached a cooperation with OpenAI to use AI models to add intelligence to robots.

In March last year, 1X Technologies received US$23.5 million in financing led by OpenAI Venture Fund.

At the beginning of this year, 1X Technologies completed Series B financing, with an amount exceeding US$100 million. EQT Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Nistad Group, Sandwater, Skagerak Capital, etc. all participated.

The wheeled robot Eve they developed has been deployed in multiple industrial tasks.

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In addition, the company is also developing a bipedal humanoid robot for daily household use-Neo. You can do household chores such as cleaning, organizing, or running errands.

Humanoid robots have been very popular recently. For this reason, many netizens said that "2024 will be the first year of humanoid robots." What do you think?

Reference link:
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-30/humanoid-robot-startup-figure-ai-in-funding-talks -for-over-2-billion-valuation?embedded-checkout=true
[2]https://www.figure.ai/
[3]https://venturebeat.com/ai/1x- robotic-startup-backed-by-openai-receives-100m-in-funding/

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