Brett Adcock, founder of Archer Aviation, who left the flying taxi company to pursue humanoid robotics and the deployment of Artificial General Intelligence, recently shared how his team at Figure AI developed a humanoid robot in just 31 months, achieving the robot's first successful walk within a year. 

Adcock recently spoke at the 2025 Abundance360 summit in Los Angeles and described how humanoid robots are the ultimate "deployment vector" for AGI, comparing what's happening in robotics to an "iPhone moment"- a game-changing breakthrough when a new product suddenly transforms an industry. 

Adcock said that Figure AI designs a new hardware platform every 12 to 18 months. He noted that his startup has secured commercial customers like BMW... 

He forecasts that Figure AI's humanoid robots will be affordable, around $20,000 to $30,000, allowing for widespread adoption in both the workplace and the home. 

Here's a summary of Adock's conversation about humanoid robotics and how the industry is in the midst of an "iPhone moment": 

Watch Here:

As we've previously described, AI, semiconductors, eVTOL, and photonics—are poised to define the great power nations in the 2030s and why the US needs to urgently re-shore or at least friend-shore those critical supply chains.

Entirely relying on China for critical minerals and magnet exports to power drones and humanoid robots has left Tesla delaying its series production of Optimus robot. 

America's robotics industry can't have an "iPhone moment" if it lacks control over the critical supply chains needed to build these technologies.