Microsoft, OpenAI plan 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. According to Bloomberg, 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. I saw that this robot was all silver and black, and its appearance resembled the image of the robot in the Hollywood science fiction blockbuster:

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

If it is not placed correctly, it will be adjusted automatically without any human remote control:

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

Is there any family already? Recognized it, yes, this robot is the Figure 01 that became popular some time ago, and the company behind it is also the robot startup Figure

. This company was founded in 2022. It just raised US$70 million in financing led by Parkway Venture Capital in May last year. 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.

Some netizens seemed to feel a sense of crisis:

OpenAI plans to influence in various ways Blue collar jobs.

“Building Figure with a 30-year long-term perspective”

As mentioned above, Figure is a A start-up robotics company, headquartered in the United States, specializing in general-purpose humanoid robots. The company’s founder and CEO is Brett Adcock.

Prior to founding Figure, Brett founded Archer Aviation, a company that makes all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Archer Aviation is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, valued at $2.7 billion, and has a $1.5 billion commercial agreement with United Airlines.

Going further, at the age of 26, Brett founded Vettery, an executive search firm. In 2018, Vettery was acquired by the Swiss Adecco Group for $110 million. Now, in his bio on his company homepage, Brett writes:

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

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

According to reports, its power is that by watching human demonstration videos,

only takes 10 hours of end-to-end training

, it can learn and complete tasks such as making coffee completely autonomously . 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 support

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 partnered with OpenAI to use AI models to add intelligence to robots. Last March, 1X Technologies raised $23.5 million in funding led by OpenAI Venture Fund.

At the beginning of this year, 1X Technologies completed Series B financing, amounting to over US$100 million, with participation from EQT Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Nistad Group, Sandwater, Skagerak Capital, etc. The wheeled robot they developed, Eve, has been deployed in multiple industrial tasks.

In addition, the company is also developing a bipedal humanoid robot for daily home 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/

This article comes from the WeChat public account: Qubit (ID: QbitAI), author: West Wind

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