BMW deploys Figure 03 robots as Figure AI’s fleet surpasses its human workforce

Humanoid robotics startup Figure AI has crossed a threshold that until recently belonged to science fiction: the company now has more robots than people on its payroll. Founder and CEO Brett Adcock announced on X this week that roughly 740 Figure robots have been deployed, compared to about 660 human employees — a ratio that has shifted rapidly since the company began mass-producing its machines.indiatoday+2

A Graph That Tells the Story

Adcock shared a chart tracking robot and human headcount from 2022 through mid-2026. Human hiring grew steadily over that period, but robot production followed a sharply different curve. By late 2025, Figure AI had surpassed 100 operational robots. Within months, accelerated manufacturing at the company's "BotQ" production facility pushed the fleet past 700 units. "For the first time, robots outnumber humans at Figure," Adcock wrote.bhaskarenglish+1

The milestone arrives on the heels of a 200-hour autonomous livestream conducted in May at Figure AI's Sunnyvale headquarters. Three Figure 03 robots sorted nearly 250,000 packages during the test — which was originally planned to last just eight hours — without a single hardware failure.interestingengineering+1

BMW Expands Its Bet

Separately on Wednesday, BMW Group announced it will deploy Figure 03 robots at its Spartanburg, South Carolina plant for complex sequencing work in logistics. The robots will pick up parts and sort them into sequencing trolleys for delivery to the assembly line.press.bmwgroup

The new deployment follows an 11-month pilot program using the earlier Figure 02 model at the same plant. During that pilot, the robots contributed to the production of more than 30,000 vehicles, handling tasks such as loading sheet metal parts on the BMW X3 body shop line. BMW has also begun a separate humanoid robotics pilot at its Leipzig plant in Germany, using robots from Hexagon Robotics.press.bmwgroup+3

The Broader Race

Figure AI's trajectory reflects a wider push in the robotics industry. A Citi report earlier this year projected that the global population of AI robots — including humanoids, autonomous vehicles, and domestic machines — could reach one billion by 2035. For now, Figure AI is positioning itself at the front of that wave, with CEO Adcock signaling that the company's robot-to-human ratio will only continue to widen. "This is just the beginning," he wrote.cnbc+1