As the race to deploy AI-powered humanoid robots at scale heats up, the perceived leaders in the market are getting increasingly bold in their claims.
Figure AI and Clone Robotics both explicitly use the phrase “synthetic human” when describing their next-generation humanoids robots. The term has mostly been used in science fiction to describe machines indistinguishable from humans. The robotics industry has avoided using it for the most part because it unsettles people.
Figure and Clone aren’t afraid of that. Though their designs and strategy differ dramatically, both companies provoke unease in their own ways. Figure AI triggers concerns about the future of work with its mission of ending human labor, while Clone affects people on a more visceral level with its Westworld-like androids.
The pace of change is raising alarms even from within the industry. Few can predict what the technological arms race driving the push for humanoids will manifest into. Comedian Whitney Cummings, who’s had a lifelike robot replica at home for years, warns of weird days ahead.
Figure AI: We the Best!
Brett Adcock, the founder of the well-funded robotics startup Figure AI, downplayed the difficulty of building humanoid robots at scale in a new interview with Bloomberg Technology.
“One thing I’ve realized over the last few years is we’re not doing car manufacturing,” Adcock told Bloomberg’s Ed Lowlow. “This is traditional consumer electronics manufacturing and that process is probably several orders of magnitude easier.”
While he said it won’t be easy, he’s confident that his Silicon Valley startup can “actually deliver significant volumes over time.” Figure has established a factory called BotQ with the goal of scaling to 12,000 units per year. Adcock has said there’s potential for 100,000 Figure robots within the next four years.
Adcock’s comments on manufacturing go against the grain, as other perceived leaders in the market, including Elon Musk, have categorized humanoid robots as incredibly complex to get to production. Tesla faces well-publicized challenges reaching its production target of 5,000 Optimus robots in 2025 because of China’s restrictions on rare earth magnet exports.
The interview took place during Bloomberg’s Tech Summit in San Francisco. Several other robotics firms showcased their technologies during the event, including Agility Robotics.
Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson said safety is the top priority for the Oregon-based robotics firm as it pushes its Digit humanoids to mass deployment. She said Agility is working with the US government on crafting humanoid regulatory requirements.
“We feel very, very strongly about safety and that is the bar that has to be met,” she said. “When that’s met, I mean the sky’s the limit.”
Adcock has a different view. He said it comes down to data and software.
“We have a data problem and a robot problem,” he said. “As you put more robots out into the world that can do something useful and people will pay you for, the cost of that robot per output of work will come down,” he said. “Because you’ll make more of them, you’ll experience curve of manufacturing.”
The interview got a bit tense when Ludlow noted that Adcock did not bring a robot to demonstrate. Figure rarely participates in industry events, and Adcock mostly communicates with the public through his social media accounts. Adcock said Figure doesn’t do many events because he doesn’t see the value.
“I think it’s a giant waste of time, to be frank,” Adcock, who also founded Archer Aviation, said. “I have to bring a team here. I have to bring robots here. They could be at the office. They could be learning autonomy.”
The founder didn’t confirm but also didn’t push back when asked about reporting that Figure is raising $1.5 billion for a $39.5 billion valuation. The shocking amount has raised eyebrows as it’s 15x Figure’s last valuation a year ago and it would place it above established giants like Ford Motor Company.
Adcock insisted Figure’s robots operate in commercial settings with no humans in the loop. The company says it has two playing customer. BMW has deployed several of its humanoids at its plant in Spartanburg, SC, and an unnamed logistics company.
Adcock wouldn’t confirm or deny reports that the second customer is UPS. He also wouldn’t comment on whether Figure is involved with Amazon’s initiative to train humanoid robots to deliver packages to doorsteps. The Information reported earlier this week that the ecommerce giant is testing robots from Agility and the Chinese company Unitree Robotics.
Figure robots use a single neural network to control tasks from just camera input. Individual robots can share what they learn with their whole fleet, like an AI robot hivemind. He said Figure does use teleoperation for data collection but stressed that none of that happens in real-world deployments.
Another well-funded startup, 1X Technologies, plans to use teleoperators as a stand-in for autonomy when needed during early home deployments. 1X has begun testing its NEO Gamma humanoids at a limited number of homes and intends to scale production in 2026.
Figure is developing its next-generation robot, the Figure 03, which will be designed for high-rate manufacturing.
“I think Figure has perhaps shown the best real-world progress in both AI and humanoid robotics globally,” Adcock said.
Clone Robotics: We’re the Future
Though it has a much smaller war chest, Clone Robotics says it’s blazing ahead of its more well-funded competitors.
In an interview with Ilir Aliu from the European deep tech group 22Astronauts, Clone Robotics co-founder Dhanush Radhakrishnan said the industry is still catching up to what it achieved years ago.
“My sense is that Clone is still pushing something here that is very valuable that’s going to unlock a ton of customer value that other companies are going to struggle to unlock,” he said. “Clone has already solved, frankly, hardware problems that I’d argue everyone else in the industry is still trying to desperately figure out how to solve today that we solved within the first 18 months.”
He said Clone’s ability to replicate the capabilities of a human hand is a foundational breakthrough that sets it apart from perceived leaders in humanoid robotics like 1X and Tesla.
“Today, you can really see this,” he said. “It’s become more apparent today than I think ever that all of the other humanoid morphologies are essentially converging to a single design while Clone still stands apart from the rest of the industry.”
Radhakrishnan launched Clone with Polish robotics engineer Lucas Kozlik in 2021. He moved to Poland after meeting his business partner on YouTube in 2020. Clone now has almost 50 employees and plans to sooner open an office in the Bay area to push AI training on their androids. The founders raised $6 million in seed funding from Initialized Capital in 2023.
The startup introduced its synthetic humanoid prototype called Protoclone V1 earlier this year. The android boasts a reported 200 degrees of freedom (DoF), 1,000 myofibers, and 500 sensors. The startup is going against the grain with its self-developed hydraulic and pneumatic actuation systems.
The founder said Clone will release a new demo soon.
Whitney Cummings’ Warning
Bill Maher made a point to book Whitney Cummings for his June 6, 2025 episode of Real Time because, as he puts it, has become “obsessed with robots lately.” He called the recent leaked footage of a Unitree robot going crazy in a Chinese lab “the shot heard around the world” and genuinely feels they’re taking over the world.
Cummings’ experience is robotics is well documented. Back in 2019, the comedian collaborated with the Las Vegas company Realbotix to develop a lifelike robotic clone of herself. The robot, named Bearclaw, appeared prominently in the standup comic’s Netflix special from that year.
She still has the fembot to this day.
“I’ll tell you what I’m really worried about with the robots is that we will anthropomorphize them and start to have compassion,” she said.
She said this is something she’s experienced as someone who feels bad for Roombas who get stuck under furniture.
“I would love to throw her away but I can’t,” she said. “You see a face and even when I leave the room, I’m like, ‘Do you want me to leave the TV on.’ Like I feel bad.”
She added: “I, of course, worry about what the robots are going to do but I also worry about what humans are going to do each other trying to protect robots that they projected onto.”
Technology has advanced significantly since Bearclaw’s debut.
In early 2025, Realbotix launched its proprietary robotic AI vision system that includes features like facial recognition, object tracking, and real-time situation detection. The company has also integrated third-party large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s Llama, and Google’s Gemini.
Realbotix reported a 166 percent increase in revenue totaling $761K during the second quarter of 2025. Its androids sell for between $20K for a bust and $175K for a full-bodied variant. The company is gearing its hyper-realistic humanoids toward roles like customer service and event marketing. The success the company is experiencing now is just the latest in a decades-long journey that began in the hidden corners of the Internet.