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OpenAI, Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Microsoft invest in humanoid robot startup



ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is looking to fuse its artificial intelligence systems into the bodies ofย humanoid robotsย as part of a new deal with robotics startup Figure.

Sunnyvale, California-based Figure announced the partnership Thursday along with $675 million in venture capital funding from a group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as well as Microsoft, chipmaker Nvidia and the startup-funding divisions of Intel and OpenAI.

Figure is less than two years old and doesnโ€™t have a commercial product but is persuading influential tech industry backers to support its vision of shipping billions of human-like robots to the worldโ€™s workplaces and homes.

โ€œIf we can just get humanoids to do work that humans are not wanting to do because thereโ€™s a shortfall of humans, we can sell millions of humanoids, billions maybe,โ€ Figure CEO Brett Adcock told The Associated Press last year.

For OpenAI, which dabbled in robotics research before pivoting to a focus on the AI large language models that power ChatGPT, the partnership will โ€œopen up new possibilities for how robots can help in everyday life,โ€ said Peter Welinder, the San Francisco companyโ€™s vice president of product and partnerships, in a written statement.

Financial terms of the deal between Figure and OpenAI werenโ€™t disclosed. The collaboration will have OpenAI building specialized AI models for Figureโ€™s humanoid robots, likely based on OpenAIโ€™s existing technology such as GPT language models, the image-generator DALL-E and the new video-generator Sora.

That will help โ€œaccelerate Figureโ€™s commercial timelineโ€ by enabling its robots to โ€œprocess and reason from language,โ€ according to Figureโ€™s announcement. The company announced in January an agreement with BMW to put its robots to work at a car plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but hadnโ€™t yet determined exactly how or when they would be used.

Robotics experts differ on the usefulness of robots shaped in human form. Most robots employed in factory and warehouse tasks might have some animal-like features โ€” a robotic arm, finger-like grippers or even legs โ€” but arenโ€™t truly humanoid. Thatโ€™s in part because itโ€™s taken decades for robotics engineers to develop robots that can walk effectively on two legs or reliably manipulate small objects.

Whitney Rockley, co-founder and managing partner of Toronto-based venture capital firm McRock Capital, said she understands the appeal of humanoids because theyโ€™re relatable, evoking emotions and starting conversations. In practice, however, she said theyโ€™re still awkward and pose huge technical challenges, which is why sheโ€™s sticking to investing in non-humanoid robots.

โ€œWe look at robotics and automation really practically and say, โ€˜What kind of timeline are we willing to commit to in order to really see commercial liftoff and deployments and applications?โ€™โ€ Rockley said. โ€œAnd I think that the groups that are backing a lot of humanoid solutions right now, theyโ€™re in there for the long haul, which is great because you need that, but itโ€™s going to take decades upon decades.โ€

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hinted at a renewed interest in robotics in a podcast hosted by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and released early this year in which Altman said the company was starting to invest in promising robotics hardware platforms after having earlier abandoned its own research.

โ€œWe started robots too early and so we had to put that project on hold,โ€ Altman told Gates, noting that โ€œwe were dealing with bad simulators and breaking tendonsโ€ that were distracting from the companyโ€™s other work.

โ€œWe realized more and more over time that what we really first needed was intelligence and cognition and then we could figure out how we could adapt it to physicality,โ€ he said.

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Theย AP has signed a deal with OpenAI for it to access its news archive.

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