Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock says the robotics company is building 'a new species' (www.businessinsider.com)

Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock told Salesforce’s Marc Benioff he’s not just building robots but “a new species” — envisioning self-replicating, knowledge-sharing machines (akin to von Neumann probes) that could autonomously build copies of themselves, mine resources and even colonize other planets. Backed by a $5 million investment from OpenAI and sharing a similar long-term outlook with Sam Altman, Figure AI recently unveiled its third‑generation humanoid, Figure 03, aimed at household tasks (not yet consumer-ready). The company faces direct competition from Tesla’s Optimus program and sits amid high-profile industry rivalries and lawsuits involving Elon Musk and OpenAI leadership, underscoring big-money stakes and fast timelines for humanoid deployment. For the AI/ML community this rhetoric shifts focus from single-robot capabilities to systemic questions about autonomy, multi-agent learning, distributed knowledge transfer, energy and manufacturing autonomy, and safety governance. It also reignites debate over form factor: humanoid bipedal designs promise human-like dexterity, while pragmatic platforms (e.g., Diligent Robotics’ wheeled Moxi — a “minimum viable humanoid”) suggest simpler, more efficient solutions for many tasks. Technically, realizing Adcock’s vision would demand breakthroughs in robust manipulation, long-duration autonomy, self-replication logistics and secure coordination protocols — and raises urgent ethical, regulatory and safety implications as robots become more autonomous and widespread.