Agility Robotics vs Figure

Shift, an AI training data startup, is offering free home cleanings in New York in exchange for first-person camera footage captured by a camera-equipped hat worn by the cleaner, with the data used to train household robots. The company says expansions to San Francisco, London, Zurich, and Munich are coming "very soon," and that it already pays tens of thousands of people across 15 countries to record activities through its app.

Figure signed a commercial agreement with Catalyst Brands to deploy humanoid robots across the retailer's distribution network, starting at a distribution center in Reno, Nevada. Catalyst Brands is the holding company for JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers.

Figure AI says its BotQ facility has scaled Figure 03 production from one unit per day to one unit per hour in under 120 days, with more than 350 third-generation robots and over 9,000 actuators across 10+ SKUs built to date. The company reports a 99.3% first-pass yield on its battery line and over 80% first-pass yield on full robots, supported by 150+ networked workstations, 50+ in-process inspection points, and 80+ end-of-line tests.

Brett Adcock's AI hardware startup Hark raised over $700 million in a Series A round valuing the company at $6 billion. Hark is building a vertically integrated family of AI hardware devices with co-developed models and interfaces; notably, Hark's models are already being trained on Adcock's Figure AI robots, creating a cross-company embodied-AI data loop.