{"id":205668,"date":"2025-02-06T01:02:56","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T07:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/figure-drops-openai-in-favor-of-in-house-models"},"modified":"2025-02-06T01:02:56","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T07:02:56","slug":"figure-drops-openai-in-favor-of-in-house-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/figure-drops-openai-in-favor-of-in-house-models","title":{"rendered":"Figure drops OpenAI in favor of in-house models"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/figure-drops-openai-in-favor-of-in-house-models.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock promised to deliver \u201csomething no one has ever seen on a humanoid\u201d in the next 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe found that to solve embodied AI at scale in the real world, you have to vertically integrate robot AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can\u2019t outsource AI for the same reason we can\u2019t outsource our hardware.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Figure AI, a robotics company working to bring a general-purpose humanoid robot into commercial and residential use, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/adcock_brett\/status\/1886860098980733197\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">announced Tuesday<\/a> on X that it is exiting a deal with OpenAI. The Bay Area-based outfit has instead opted to focus on in-house AI owing to a \u201cmajor breakthrough.\u201d In conversation with TechCrunch afterward, founder and CEO Brett Adcock was tightlipped in terms of specifics, but he promised to deliver \u201csomething no one has ever seen on a humanoid\u201d in the next 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI has been a longtime investor in Figure. The two companies <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/02\/29\/figure-rides-the-humanoid-robot-hype-wave-to-2-6b-valuation-and-openai-collab\/\">announced a deal<\/a> last year that aimed to \u201cdevelop next generation AI models for humanoid robots.\u201d At the same time, Figure announced a $675 million raise, valuing the company at $2.6 billion. Figure has so far raised a total of $1.5 billion from investors.<\/p>\n<p>The news is a surprise, given the role that OpenAI plays in the cultural zeitgeist. Mere association with the company comes with a rapid profile boost. In August, the <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/08\/06\/figures-new-humanoid-robot-leverages-openai-for-natural-speech-conversations\/\">two companies announced<\/a> that the Figure 2 humanoid would use OpenAI models for natural language communication.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/figure-drops-openai-in-favor-of-in-house-models\">Continue reading \u201cFigure drops OpenAI in favor of in-house models\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock promised to deliver \u201csomething no one has ever seen on a humanoid\u201d in the next 30 days. \u201cWe found that to solve embodied AI at scale in the real world, you have to vertically integrate robot AI.\u201d \u201cWe can\u2019t outsource AI for the same reason we can\u2019t outsource our hardware.\u201d [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":543,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/543"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}