Microsoft and OpenAI may fund $100 million in Figure AI Robotics

Software giant Microsoft and AI company OpenAI are in talks with AI robotics firm Figure AI for a potential investment of $100 million in this startup.

Figure AI is looking for new investors and the company is continuously holding conversations with big tech firms to participate in achieving a large valuation.

Bloomberg reports that the robotics company is seeking $500 million in the funding round, which could be led by Microsoft and OpenAI. These companies would invest around $95 and $5 million respectively in Figure AI.

Following this round of funding, Figure could reach a $1.9 billion pre-money valuation, suggests people related to this matter. However, its post-money valuation could be higher based on the amount raised.

OpenAI is a leading company in AI technologies and one of its major products is ChatGPT. The application uses large language models and works with generative artificial intelligence (AI) to interact with users.

This program raised massive attention in the AI industry and led to a new phase in AI application development.

Microsoft has funded a major stake in OpenAI, the company initially invested $1 billion in 2019. This helped the organization, now turned “for profit”, to increase operations.

Three years later in 2023, Microsoft boasted the investment to $13 billion which increased OpenAI’s valuation to $29 billion.

Both of these tech companies are taking an interest in new AI ventures and Figure could be their next destination.

This new investment could come as a support for Figure AI to compete against Tesla which is currently developing a humanoid AI robot called Optimus.