US-Tech giants including Nvidia and OpenAI invest $675 million in robot AI start up

Figure AI Inc, a tech start-up building autonomous artificial intelligence-driven robots for commercial applications, has received sizeable investments from major US tech companies like OpenAI, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos through his firm Explore Investments LLC, Bloomberg reports.
The early stage robot start-up is raising about $675 million in a funding round that carries a pre-money valuation of roughly $2 billion according to Bloomberg’s sources, who declined to reveal their identities.
Bezos is apparently fronting $100 million, Microsoft $95 million and a fund affiliated with Nvidia and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is investing $50 million.
Figure AI’s founder Brett Adcock believes autonomous robots will eliminate the need for unsafe and undesirable jobs, and could potentially address the problem of a global ageing population and labour shortages.
Joining some of the biggest names in tech were more standouts – Intel Corp (NASDAQ:INTC), LG Innotek and Samsung (KS:005930) also made sizeable investments of between $5 and $25 million.
Alongside them were several US venture capital firms like Parkway Venture Capital, Align (NASDAQ:ALGN) Ventures, ARK Venture Fund and Aliya Capital Partners. The roughly $2 billion valuation is pre-money, meaning it doesn’t account for the capital that Figure is raising. The company is still in the research and development phase and has not yet generated any sales, according to sources close to the company.
OpenAI at one point considered acquiring the company just a few months ago, but instead invested $5 million as an initial lead investor alongside Microsoft.
Given Figure AI has received commitments for $675 million while only seeking $500 million in capital, robots may be the next big AI-related tech venture.
The market for AI robotic companies is still in its infancy but has seen initial movement recently with the IPO of the German AI robotics company Circus SE (Xetra: CA1) in January as one of the world’s first listed companies in this emerging sector. Circus is building AI robotics to disrupt the $2.6 trillion food service sector