Figure 02 vs Tesla Optimus vs Boston Dynamics Atlas: The Humanoid Robot Race

Let me tell you something that'd sound ridiculous five years ago: we're in a genuine three-way race to build the first commercially viable humanoid robot, and the leading contender is a company that didn't exist before 2022. Figure AI, Tesla, and Boston Dynamics are all building humanoid robots. They're all promising these machines will do the jobs humans don't want to do. And they're all spending billions to get there. But the approaches couldn't be more different. ## Figure AI: The Startup That Won't Slow Down Figure AI shouldn't be winning this race. Founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock — no robotics pedigree, just a thesis, venture money, and insane execution speed. And yet. Figure 01 was the prototype. Then came the BMW partnership for automotive manufacturing. Then a $675 million funding round in February 2024 backed by Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Intel, at a $2.6 billion valuation. Figure 02, introduced in August 2024, brought integrated cabling, a torso battery, six RGB cameras with an onboard vision-language model, NVIDIA RTX GPU modules, and redesigned hands with 16 degrees of freedom. Tested at a BMW plant in South Carolina. Not a demo — an actual factory floor. In February 2025, Figure announced Helix — 35 degrees of freedom, human-like wrists and fingers, a dual-system architecture (System 2 for planning at 7-9 Hz, System 1 for motor control at 200 Hz). Two GPUs per robot. Can control two robots simultaneously. March 2025: BotQ opens — a manufacturing facility for 12,000 humanoids per year. Figure plans to use its own robots to build more robots. Figure 03 arrived in October 2025: complete redesign with next-gen cameras, palm cameras in each hand, and tactile sensors detecting forces as small as three grams. Safety-focused soft materials and wireless inductive charging for home environments. September 2025 funding round: $1 billion, $39 billion valuation. Investors include Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, and Salesforce. One interesting move: Figure ended its OpenAI collaboration in 2025, betting that LLMs are "getting smarter yet more commoditized." The real differentiation is embodiment, control systems, and manufacturing. I think they're right. ## Tesla Optimus: The Most Hyped, Least Proven I'm going to be blunt: Tesla Optimus is the most overpromised product in the humanoid robot space. Musk announced the Tesla Bot in August 2021. Semi-functional prototypes wobbled across a stage in September 2022. Generation 2 appeared in December 2023 with dancing and egg-poaching. Generation 3 hands got 22 degrees of freedom. The October 2024 "We, Robot" event was most revealing. Optimus robots interacted with crowds impressively — until critics pointed out they were primarily using teleoperation. Humans were controlling them remotely. Tesla wasn't transparent about this. Musk claimed Optimus would enter limited production in 2025 with 1,000+ units in Tesla facilities. As of February 2026, there's no evidence that happened. In June 2025, the Optimus program lead since 2022 resigned. That's either a sign of strategic pivot or a sign the approach wasn't working. The promised $30,000 retail price would be dramatically cheaper than any competitor — if they can deliver. **My assessment:** Tesla has the manufacturing infrastructure and capital. But they're at least 18 months behind Figure in real-world deployment, and the teleoperation concerns are a serious credibility issue. ## Boston Dynamics Atlas: The Veteran Reinventing Itself Boston Dynamics has been building robots since 2013. The original Atlas was a hydraulic DARPA-funded research platform. The viral parkour and dance videos generated billions of views, but the old Atlas was never a commercial product. In April 2024, they retired the hydraulic Atlas and revealed a fully electric replacement the next day. Sleeker, stronger, moves beyond human range of motion, designed for commercial deployment with different gripper variations. Boston Dynamics' advantage is institutional knowledge. They understand locomotion, balance, and manipulation at a level neither Figure nor Tesla has had time to develop. Spot (the robot dog) is already commercially deployed at scale. The disadvantage? Hyundai ownership provides automotive manufacturing expertise but isn't as aggressive as Figure's VC backers or Tesla's market cap. ## The Honest Comparison **Furthest along in deployment?** Figure. Not close. BMW factory floor, dedicated manufacturing facility, three hardware generations in four years. **Best underlying technology?** Toss-up between Figure and Boston Dynamics. Figure's Helix VLA is innovative. Boston Dynamics' decades of locomotion research cover edge cases nobody else has seen. **Most resources?** Tesla, by an absurd margin. If Musk pours real resources in, the manufacturing infrastructure could overwhelm everyone. ## What Nobody's Talking About The real story isn't any of these three companies. It's China. Chinese firms have reportedly shipped over 10,000 humanoid units already. Unitree, Fourier Intelligence, and UBTech are iterating fast at price points Western companies can't match. The humanoid robot race isn't a three-way contest. It's a US-China contest, and whoever manufactures at scale, at cost, with sufficient capability wins. **My prediction:** By end of 2027, Figure AI will be the first Western company with humanoid robots at meaningful commercial scale. Boston Dynamics will be a strong second. Tesla will still be promising Optimus is "coming soon." The wildcard is China. And anyone ignoring that wildcard is going to be surprised.