The hard problem for Figure is not manufacturing but achieving true human-level intelligence in a robot so it can work in any home or environment through language alone — solving general robotics.
Adcock argues that the real challenge isn't mass production — it's building robots intelligent enough to enter any unseen environment and perform useful work through language commands alone. He believes this is solvable with about 100 robots and a 50-person team, representing a trillion-dollar opportunity. ✦ AI generated
Brett Adcock · My First Million · 2026-08-14 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 18:50
“Is it true to say that with like Archer, Figure, and Harkc, the the hard problem seems like can I just massproduce this?”
The hard problem is not that. We think we believe now the most important constraint to really solve is like building a really intelligent robot system to the world... We're trying to crack like the true human level intelligence of figure. Like we really want to tackle like how do we make it so I can put it into any home. It can do every every every job I'd want it to do. That's what we're working on... what I've learned now is that the home is super solvable today. So like we can like not go work on that problem and just like sit here and work in a warehouse, but me or none of my guys want to solve that problem. We want to solve a robot that can go into any environment just through language and do work. We want to be the first to do that. You can probably do that with a 100 robots and a 50 person team. So that that company overnight would be a trillion dollar market cap.
verbatim transcript · starts at 18:50
18:30he saw our stuff and he's just like holy [ __ ] man. This is the first time I've ever seen anybody that could possibly take out like take out the big guys. >> Well, is it true to say that with like Archer, Figure, and Harkc, the the hard problem seems like can I just massproduce this? >> The hard problem is not that. We think we believe now the most important
18:50constraint to really solve is like building a really intelligent robot system to the world. Like there's a bunch of robots you can go buy now. You can buy some from China and you get them and they're complete crap. They can't do anything. They like you can joy sticking around. That's all you can do. And you like hit a button and it waves. It's got no hands. It's got nubs. And you're
19:08like, "What do I do with this thing? It's a toy." It's like It's like It's like early when I bought a I bought a DJI drone like years ago and I was like playing around with it. Then like a day later, I was like, "What do I do with this thing?" >> And uh it was like it was like hard to set up. It didn't really work well. Like
19:18you know, whatever. It's just like I flew into a bunch of trees. It just didn't work. I was like, "This is what am I doing with this thing?" Robots are like that now. Like where you can we can go manufacture a ton of them, but like if they're not really smart, like it's not really going to be that helpful. We're trying to crack like the true human level intelligence of figure. Like
19:33we really want to tackle like how do we make it so I can put it into any home. It can do every every every job I'd want it to do. That's what we're working on. We think that's the largest like like you know think about the largest like gap in the schedule of what we need to go solve for. Like it's that then beyond that like you know people generally
19:50sometimes confuse like consumer electronics manufacturing with car manufacturing. There's no company big company in the world that would look like say like uh uh I'm scared of manufacturing this consumer electronics at high rate if there's so much demand like this is just possible to go do I mean you can make them you make we make a billion phones almost like you know pseudo by hand in the world and with
20:09some automation but cars is a different story cars like you will die trying to manufacture cars there's like there's like lot of like you just like it's so and having seen like you know BMW is a commercial customer of us I haven't been in BMW and a few other groups like it's gnarly early. The reason why cars are so hard is that you can't hold the part in
20:27your hand. Phones you can just like always hold in your hand and go change or whatever, move and hold. Like cars you can't you physically can't. So you need robots that like literally pass it to other robots that put things on the chassis. And if any of those break across like thousands or 800 robots, you're dead. It is you're the whole line's done. And so it's just like this