Estimated read time: 9 minutes 35 seconds

Brett Adcock: The Humanoid Revolution

The Illinois winter bit hard against the windows of Central A&M High School as sixteen-year-old Brett Adcock hunched over a computer, building his first e-commerce website. Outside, the flat landscape of his family's third-generation farm stretched toward the horizon—a world defined by physical labor that had shaped generations of Adcocks before him. But Brett's mind raced in a different direction, envisioning digital landscapes where effort could be multiplied and transformed. He didn't yet know that this teenage fascination would someday lead him to build machines that might fundamentally alter the nature of work itself.

Twenty-two years later, in February 2025, Adcock stood in the bustling Sunnyvale headquarters of Figure AI, his humanoid robotics company now valued at $2.6 billion. He had just made a momentous decision: to end Figure's partnership with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence powerhouse that had been a key investor and technology collaborator. "We found that to solve embodied AI at scale in the real world, you have to vertically integrate robot AI," Adcock explained. "We can't outsource AI for the same reason we can't outsource our hardware."

The announcement sent ripples through the tech industry. Just months earlier, Figure's alliance with OpenAI had been trumpeted as a natural pairing of complementary strengths. Now, Adcock was betting Figure's future on an in-house breakthrough he claimed would deliver "something no one has ever seen on a humanoid" within thirty days. To outsiders, the pivot might have seemed reckless. But those familiar with Adcock's career recognized a pattern—the same blend of ambition, velocity, and calculated risk-taking that had already built him two successful companies before his fortieth birthday.

Farm to Fortune

Brett Adcock's origin story begins far from Silicon Valley's innovation factories. Born in 1986 and raised outside the small town of Moweaqua, Illinois (population 1,800), Adcock grew up immersed in the rhythms and rigors of agricultural life. The farm instilled in him both a work ethic and a pragmatic approach to problem-solving that would later become hallmarks of his entrepreneurial style.

"I'm twenty years into building technology companies," Adcock notes on his personal website. "I spent the first decade building in the software/internet space and since then within AI & hardware." This modest summary belies the ambitious trajectory of his career.

After graduating as valedictorian from his high school, Adcock initially studied engineering before shifting to business at the University of Florida. By 2013, he had founded Vettery, an AI-based recruiting marketplace that matched job seekers with employers. The platform solved a real problem—inefficient hiring—and after five years of growth, was acquired by the Adecco Group for $100 million.

Most entrepreneurs might have paused after such a successful exit. Adcock immediately founded Archer Aviation, tackling the seemingly impossible challenge of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The speed of Archer's development stunned industry observers. Within just two years of emerging from stealth mode, Archer had secured partnerships with Fiat Chrysler, inked a billion-dollar provisional order with United Airlines, and built a working prototype. By 2021, the company had gone public at a $2.7 billion valuation.

Even before fully stepping away from Archer, Adcock was already plotting his next venture—one that would dwarf his previous companies in both technical ambition and potential global impact.

The Figure Vision

In 2022, Adcock founded Figure AI with a mission statement as ambitious as it was straightforward: to build autonomous general-purpose humanoid robots that could perform the full range of human physical labor. The timing wasn't accidental. Adcock had identified a convergence of technological breakthroughs—in batteries, motors, AI systems, and bipedal locomotion—that made humanoid robotics commercially viable for the first time.

"I think this is the right decade to make it work," Adcock said in a 2023 interview. "I want to design and work on projects that can be really helpful for the world. With Figure we hope to do a lot of the dirty and dull and dangerous jobs that humans do today."

The agricultural imagery of Adcock's youth surfaces repeatedly in his descriptions of Figure's goals. Rather than displacing human workers, he frames the company's robots as solutions to chronic labor shortages. "There's a huge labor crisis that's going on that's really not well reported and we want to help solve that," he has emphasized in multiple interviews.

This grounding in real-world problems distinguishes Adcock from more utopian tech visionaries. While he speaks of a future where "physical labor will be optional," his focus remains firmly on practical applications in existing industries. Unlike some competitors who toil for decades in research labs, Adcock's approach emphasizes speed, commercial partnerships, and real-world testing—a strategy reminiscent of the Wright brothers' rapid prototyping a century earlier.

The BMW Proving Ground

In January 2024, Figure announced a partnership with BMW to integrate its humanoid robots into the automaker's Spartanburg, South Carolina plant. The deal represented more than a financial milestone. It provided a real-world laboratory for Figure's robots to perform actual manufacturing tasks in one of the world's most demanding production environments.

The second-generation Figure 02 robot completed its initial testing at the BMW facility in mid-2024, successfully inserting sheet metal parts into specific fixtures that were later assembled into car chassis. This task required exceptional dexterity and precision—the robot had to handle flexible sheet metal while fitting it into pin-poles less than a centimeter wide.

By November 2024, Figure announced that the Figure 02 had achieved a 400% increase in speed and a sevenfold improvement in success rate at the BMW plant. The robot was now performing up to 1,000 placements per day with millimeter-level precision. "This will only improve as we deploy more robots, collect more data, and improve our AI models," Adcock noted at the time, adding, "We are nowhere near the maximum speed that can be achieved by the motors."

The automotive plant represents a strategic first beachhead in Adcock's larger vision. Manufacturing environments offer structured challenges that can be more readily mastered than the chaotic environments of homes. The high cost of the robots—likely in the six-figure range initially—also makes industrial clients the logical early adopters. But Adcock's ambitions extend far beyond factory floors.

Beyond the Factory: The Home Frontier

In February 2025, just days after announcing the split with OpenAI, Figure unveiled "Helix," a new vision-language-action model developed entirely in-house. The system enabled the Figure 02 robot to understand and respond to natural language commands while manipulating objects in residential settings—a far more challenging environment than structured industrial spaces.

This represented a significant step toward Adcock's ultimate vision: robots that could work not just in factories but in homes, performing the full range of domestic tasks. "For robots to be useful in households, they will need to be capable of generating intelligent new behaviors on-demand, especially for objects they've never seen before," Figure explained in its announcement.

The shift from factory to home parallels the evolution of personal computers—initially too expensive and complex for individual consumers, they eventually became household staples as costs declined and usability improved. Adcock foresees a similar trajectory for humanoid robots. "I think over time every human will have a humanoid," he predicts.

This vision positions Figure at the intersection of several transformative trends: artificial intelligence, robotics, labor economics, and even space exploration. "[Humanoid robots] could even help colonize planets on the moon and Mars," Adcock has suggested.

The Pioneer Pattern

Adcock's approach to technological advancement places him within a distinguished lineage of American innovators. Like Steve Jobs, he combines technological vision with commercial pragmatism. Like Elon Musk, he tackles multiple industries simultaneously with seemingly impossible timelines. Like Benjamin Franklin, his innovations are rooted in practical solutions to real-world problems.

But perhaps the most striking parallel is with the Wright brothers, a comparison that Adcock himself recognizes in Figure's approach to innovation. Like Wilbur and Orville Wright, Adcock sees rapid iteration and real-world testing as the path to solving seemingly impossible technical challenges. "At Figure, we believe getting to market faster is super healthy from an engineering perspective," Adcock has said, embodying the practical experimentalism that allowed the Wrights to succeed where better-funded, more theoretical approaches failed.

This parallel extends to the potential impact of Figure's technology. Just as the Wright Flyer inaugurated an era of aviation that fundamentally transformed human society, Figure's humanoids could mark the beginning of a new relationship between humans and labor—one where, as Adcock puts it, physical work becomes a choice rather than a necessity.

The Race Against Time

As of early 2025, Figure stands at a pivotal moment. The company has raised more than $750 million, successfully demonstrated its technology in real-world applications, and now claims a breakthrough in robot intelligence. Yet it faces formidable competitors, from Elon Musk's Tesla with its Optimus robot to Boston Dynamics with its Atlas, as well as emerging players like Agility Robotics and Norway's 1X.

The race to build the first commercially viable humanoid robot echoes previous technological competitions—from the space race to the development of personal computers and smartphones. Each of these contests accelerated innovation through a combination of competitive pressure and parallel approaches. Figure's decision to build its AI systems in-house rather than relying on OpenAI represents a bet that vertical integration will provide the competitive edge needed to win this race.

For Adcock, the coming months will be crucial. The promised revelation of Figure's AI breakthrough will either cement the company's leadership position or expose the risks of its go-it-alone strategy. Either way, Adcock's meteoric career continues to embody the spirit of American innovation—bold vision combined with relentless execution, all aimed at transforming how humans live and work.

For Adcock, the journey from an Illinois farm to the forefront of robotics represents more than personal success—it embodies a quintessentially American story of reinvention. The boy who watched his family toil with physical labor now builds machines that may transform the very nature of work itself. His robots could ultimately free millions from the kind of manual tasks that defined generations of workers before them, including his own ancestors. The profound consequences of this transformation—economic, social, and philosophical—will unfold rapidly, driven forward by the relentless velocity that has defined Adcock's career. The farm taught him persistence; Silicon Valley gave him tools; but it's his unique blend of midwestern pragmatism and technological audacity that may ultimately change how humanity works.