Figure 04 reaches design lock as Figure AI's next humanoid enters parts shipping

Figure AI has confirmed that Figure 04, its fourth-generation humanoid robot, has reached design lock: the hardware design has been frozen and parts have begun shipping for component testing. The update came from founder and CEO Brett Adcock in a public recording of an internal company meeting, published on October 22, 2026.

According to Adcock, the step from Figure 03 to Figure 04 is the largest generational leap in the company's history — a company statement, not an independently measured performance result. He likened the new model to the "iPhone 1 of humanoids," a reference to a category-defining product rather than a technical specification.

What changed in the hardware

The redesign focuses on three areas. First, Figure's in-house actuators, which were already running in the company's test lab. Second, the battery: the team had brought up ten full battery packs in the week before the presentation, with load and thermal testing still to come. Third, and most emphasized by Adcock, the hands.

The Figure 04 hand is on its fourth design iteration. The team spent months working on fingertip tracking at millimeter-level precision against human references. The goal, according to the company, is to let the robot reproduce human movements more faithfully, making it easier to transfer human demonstrations into robot actions. Adcock described the new hand as approaching human parity, but he presented no standardized dexterity benchmark or independent results to support that comparison — so the claim should be read as a company statement.

Context: Figure 03 and the data bet

In the same presentation, Adcock said Figure built its 1,000th Figure 03 over the summer and cut costs by more than 90% between Figure 02 and Figure 03, without disclosing an absolute cost or customer price. Figure 04 is therefore the hardware base on which the company plans to train the next phase of its Helix model, with a heavy strategy of human-motion data collection and computing — the company cited, for example, an estimated $8.1 million spent on data in a single week. Those figures are company-reported and have not been independently verified.

What has not been revealed yet

It is important to separate the announcement from a product launch. Design lock means the engineering drawings were finalized for production preparation — it is not a launch. No assembled Figure 04 was shown walking or performing tasks: in the presentation, the robot appeared blurred. Figure has also not disclosed weight, payload, runtime, price, or a public reveal date for the new model.

In short: what is confirmed is the design freeze and the start of parts shipments and component testing; the real performance of the new hands, battery, and actuators still depends on specifications and demonstrations the company has not published.

Image credit: Figure AI (press material, via the company's official website). The image shows a Figure humanoid from a previous generation: Figure 04 has not yet been revealed unblurred, so the photo does not depict the new model.

Sources

Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checking public posts and the internet sources cited below. Information described as company statements is presented as statements, not as independently verified facts. Please consult the original sources to confirm the details.

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