Figure AI: humanoid robots, Helix AI and BotQ production

Figure AI develops general-purpose humanoid robots across two generations, Figure 02 and Figure 03, built around its artificial intelligence system Helix. In September 2025 the company announced a funding round of more than $1 billion, at a valuation of $39 billion. Its Figure 02 helped produce more than 30,000 BMW X3s, and the Figure 03 is now taking over at the carmaker’s Spartanburg plant in the United States. In April 2026, Figure said it had delivered more than 350 Figure 03 robots from its BotQ production site.

Figure AI’s announcements point to two goals: putting its humanoids to work in industrial settings and teaching them household tasks. On the official website, the Figure 03 is presented as a robot for the home, able to handle laundry, clean and do the dishes. Its deployment at BMW also shows it at work in industrial logistics. Helix, the AI system developed by Figure, is the software foundation for these applications.

Who is Figure AI and what does the company make?

Figure AI makes the Figure 02 humanoid, also known as F.02, and the Figure 03, or F.03. Both generations have accompanied the development of its AI system Helix, designed to link the robot’s visual perception, reasoning and movement.

The Figure 02 was used for the company’s first claimed deployments. Figure credits it with its first deployment at BMW, the debut of Helix, the first household tasks performed by one of its robots and a first logistics deployment.

The Figure 03, unveiled on 9 October 2025, succeeds it. Figure describes it as an electric humanoid robot designed for a wide range of tasks, with an architecture suited to mass production.

The industrial strategy rests on the BotQ site, while software development relies on Helix and on Index, a dataset of human physical behaviour. Figure also works with outside companies to deploy its robots and expand its computing resources.

Figure 02 vs Figure 03: two generations with different roles

Figure 02 at BMW: the industrial pilot

The Figure 02 was used at BMW’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The 2025 pilot lasted ten months. The robots helped position body panels for welding.

According to BMW, the trial contributed to the production of more than 30,000 BMW X3s. This figure refers to vehicles produced with the robot’s involvement, not to the number of robots built or the number of parts handled.

Figure then retired its Figure 02 fleet. The machines were destroyed in a furnace of molten steel in Finland, in an operation filmed with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company explained the retirement by the ramp-up of the Figure 03 and the lack of any reason to keep the previous generation.

How the operation unfolded is described in our article on the retirement and destruction of the Figure 02 robots in Finland.

Figure 03: a new humanoid platform

The Figure 03 stands 1.73 m tall, weighs 61 kg and has a stated payload of 20 kg. Figure quotes a runtime of five hours and a walking speed of 1.2 m/s.

The official presentation focuses on homes, with narrow spaces, stairs and varied layouts. The company describes voice interaction that lets users ask the robot questions and assign it tasks.

BMW has also shown the Figure 03 in an industrial setting. At Spartanburg, it sorts loose components before placing them on a sequencing cart. This work falls under the logistics preparation of parts.

The carmaker describes hands fitted with tactile sensors and palm-mounted cameras, audio functions, wireless charging and a soft textile covering on several parts of the body. The stated purpose of the textile is to reduce the risks associated with collisions.

The model’s specifications, equipment and uses are covered in the full Figure 03 profile.

Figure 03 specs: official technical data

The values below come from the Figure 03 presentation published by the manufacturer, consulted on 20 October 2026.

These are the specifications published by Figure. BMW’s industrial trials provide additional information on the robot’s equipment and applications.

Helix: how Figure AI controls its humanoid robots

Helix is Figure AI’s artificial intelligence system. The company presents it as a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that turns visual information and instructions into physical actions.

Figure says Helix handles perception, movement and reasoning on board the robot, in real time. The system is meant to let the Figure 03 carry out tasks without following a fully predefined script of actions.

Helix has been the subject of a series of announcements:

• 27 January 2026: unveiling of Helix 02, linked to full-body autonomy.
• 9 March 2026: release of a living-room tidying demonstration.
• 8 May 2026: announcement of a bedroom tidying demonstration.
• 17 September 2026: unveiling of Helix 2.5 and a generalisation evaluation in 30 homes.

The Helix 2.5 test announced by Figure was carried out in 30 homes in the Bay Area, California. Three tasks were evaluated: putting away 13 to 15 toys in a living room, folding towels and making a bed.

Figure says it used the same frozen software checkpoint in all 30 homes, with no additional training on site. The company describes the method as a “zero-shot” evaluation, meaning a test in new environments without prior training specific to each of them.

In the reported results, the policy trained from scratch reached a 9% success rate, against 56% for the pre-trained policy. Figure therefore claims a success rate more than six times higher in this comparison.

The company also says Helix 2.5 matches the success rate of Helix 02 with half as much adaptation data. These are the results of the evaluation presented by Figure.

The Helix page details the announced architecture, the versions of the system and the evaluation results. Our article on the Helix 2.5 tests in 30 unfamiliar homes covers the protocol and the success figures.

Index and Nscale: training data and computing power

Helix’s development also relies on Index, a large-scale dataset of human behaviour that Figure presented on 25 August 2026.

Figure says it pre-trained its foundation model on Index before evaluating it in homes. For its generalisation study, the company states that no evaluated task accounted for more than 1.90% of the pre-training set.

It also compared four models trained on different subsets of Index, with data volumes varying by a factor of eight. The experiment is intended to study how the amount of data affects the system’s performance.

On 3 September 2026, Figure announced a partnership with Nscale for access to infrastructure of up to 100,000 GPUs on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform.

This figure is the ceiling stated in the partnership, not a number of processors already installed or actually in use by Figure.

BMW and Catalyst Brands: Figure AI’s announced partnerships

BMW is an identified industrial partner of Figure AI. After the Figure 02 pilot in 2025, the carmaker brought the Figure 03 into its Spartanburg plant. The arrival of the new model was announced on 30 June 2026.

The job described for the Figure 03 differs from its predecessor’s. The Figure 02 worked on body panels ahead of welding, while the Figure 03 sorts components and places them on a sequencing cart.

The new deployment covers the plant’s expanded Hall 52. BMW has detailed the Figure 03’s physical equipment, including its instrumented hands and soft covering.

The details of this transition are covered in the article BMW replaces the Figure 02 with the Figure 03 at Spartanburg.

On 26 May 2026, Figure announced an agreement with Catalyst Brands aimed at expanding operations that use its humanoids. The partnership appears in the company’s official timeline.

These relationships reflect the two sides of Figure’s development: testing robots in physical work and finding partners to expand their deployment.

BotQ factory: where Figure 03 production stands

Figure has started building the Figure 03 at its BotQ site. The industrial data reported by eWeek make it possible to separate robots actually produced, demonstrated production rates and the stated capacity of the facility.

In April 2026, Figure said it had delivered more than 350 Figure 03 robots from BotQ. This figure covers units delivered from the production site and does not establish how many were sold commercially.

The company said it had gone from producing one Figure 03 per day to a demonstrated cycle time of one robot per hour. According to the data reported by eWeek, this amounts to a 24-fold increase in throughput in under 120 days.

According to Figure, the first-generation BotQ line has a capacity of up to 12,000 humanoids per year. This is a stated industrial capacity, not an actual annual production volume.

What quality figures does Figure report for its production lines?

Figure has released two industrial quality indicators:

• 99.3% first-pass yield on the battery production line, with more than 500 packs shipped.
• More than 80% end-of-line yield for complete robots.

The first indicator refers to batteries that pass inspection without rework on their first pass. The second refers to complete robots reaching the end of the build process.

The Figure 03 was redesigned to make mass production easier. The processes cited include die casting, injection moulding and stamping, techniques suited to producing industrial parts in volume.

Figure says its new robot costs significantly less to build than the Figure 02. This statement concerns the industrial manufacturing cost, not a retail price.

Figure AI funding: a $39 billion valuation

On 16 September 2025, Figure AI announced a Series C funding round of more than $1 billion.

The round came with a post-money valuation of $39 billion. The post-money valuation is the value attributed to the company once the announced funding is taken into account.

The two amounts describe different things: the first measures the money raised in the round, the second Figure’s valuation after it.

The announcement came a few weeks before the Figure 03 was unveiled, and ahead of the 2026 announcements on accelerating production, Helix developments and partnerships.

Figure AI timeline: September 2025 to September 2026

The official announcements trace the shift from the Figure 02 to the Figure 03, the development of Helix and the industrial ramp-up. The entries below reflect the topics announced by Figure, without attributing any further results to them.

Three guides to Figure’s robots and software

Figure 03: specifications and uses

The Figure 03 profile covers the humanoid model, its dimensions, runtime, payload, the equipment described by BMW and its household and industrial applications. It brings together the official data and the observations attributed to the various announcements.

Helix: artificial intelligence and training

The guide Helix, Figure’s artificial intelligence explains how the Vision-Language-Action system is said to work, how it runs on board the robot and the Helix 02 and Helix 2.5 updates. It also covers the home tests and the role of the Index dataset.

Can you buy a Figure robot?

The page Can you buy a Figure robot? examines the commercial status of the company’s humanoids. It distinguishes between robots built at BotQ, industrial deployments and published information on possible purchases by private buyers.

What we do not know yet

As of 20 October 2026, official communications and reported information on Figure AI leave several questions unanswered.

• Price: no public retail price has been given for the Figure 03. The exact manufacturing cost is also unknown.
• Availability: no delivery date for private buyers has been given, whether in France, Europe or other markets.
• Ordering: no waiting list or public ordering process has been specified.
• After-sales service: warranty, maintenance and after-sales terms have not been detailed.
• Software development: whether an SDK will be available or the platform opened to outside developers has not been specified.
• Technical specifications: battery capacity, charging times and detailed specifications for the sensors and hands are not included in the official Figure 03 data sheet.
• Performance: no complete independent measurement of the capabilities of the Figure 03 or Helix is available in the information presented. Success rates for the video demonstrations have not been disclosed.
• Production: the stated annual capacity of BotQ says nothing about the total number of robots produced, sold or deployed since the figures published in April 2026.

See also: Figure 03: humanoid robot profile | Helix: Figure’s AI | Buying a Figure robot: availability and price | Figure 02 robots destroyed in Finland | BMW moves from the Figure 02 to the Figure 03 | Helix 2.5 tested in 30 homes | Humanoid robot prices: the gaps across the market.