Boston Dynamics

No. Figure AI is a US company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, founded in 2022 by American entrepreneur Brett Adcock. The confusion likely reflects the substantial Chinese humanoid-manufacturer presence in the broader category (Unitree, AgiBot, UBTech), but Figure AI is American.

No, not yet. Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid is in research-to-commercial transition following the April 2024 reveal of the new electric Atlas platform. The company's quadruped Spot is the commercially-verified product line; Atlas commercial deployment timeline has not been announced. Boston Dynamics is owned by Hyundai Motor Group, which positions Atlas for industrial/enterprise rather than consumer markets.

Unitree's G1 humanoid robot starts at roughly $13,500 to $16,000 for a base research-grade configuration, with more advanced versions running higher. The smaller R1 starts at $5,900 for an entry consumer and developer configuration. Both are made by Unitree Robotics, a Chinese manufacturer based in Hangzhou, and represent the most aggressively priced humanoid platforms commercially available in 2026.

Mentee Robotics is an Israeli humanoid robot maker founded in 2022 by Amnon Shashua, the AI researcher who also leads Mobileye and AI21. Mobileye acquired Mentee in January 2026 for approximately $900 million ($612M cash plus Mobileye Class A shares), making Mentee an independent operating unit inside Mobileye. The company's MenteeBot humanoid is positioned as an AI-first general-purpose platform leveraging Mobileye's autonomous-vehicle perception heritage.

The major American humanoid makers are Figure AI (Sunnyvale CA), Apptronik (Austin TX), Tesla (Palo Alto CA / Austin TX), Boston Dynamics (Waltham MA; Hyundai-owned), and Agility Robotics (Salem OR). The major Chinese makers are Unitree Robotics (Hangzhou), AgiBot (Shanghai), UBTech (Shenzhen), Fourier Intelligence (Shanghai), XPeng Robotics (Guangzhou), and several others. 1X Technologies operates a Norwegian-American structure (Moss Norway HQ plus Hayward California factory). Mentee Robotics is Israeli (acquired by Mobileye January 2026). Sanctuary AI is Canadian (Vancouver).

Every major humanoid manufacturer uses teleoperation in development and demonstration. The differential across the cohort is the disclosure layer, not the underlying practice. 1X is the most transparent (explicit teleop disclosure on the consumer commerce surface). Tesla operated framing-without-disclosure at We Robot 2024 (autonomy framing; subsequently confirmed teleoperated). Figure deploys with human-in-loop for exception handling at customer facilities. Apptronik has mixed disclosure across enterprise pilots. The framework treats the disclosure differential as the editorial finding.

Sanctuary AI is a Canadian humanoid robotics company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, founded by Geordie Rose and Suzanne Gildert (both Kindred AI alumni). The company's Phoenix platform is a seventh-generation humanoid emphasizing a cognitive architecture that combines symbolic reasoning with neural learning, structurally distinct from the end-to-end foundation-model approach most US humanoid makers pursue. Sanctuary AI is privately held; not publicly traded.

UBTech Robotics is a publicly-traded Chinese humanoid manufacturer headquartered in Shenzhen, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Walker S2 is the company's industrial-focused humanoid platform deployed in factory pilots with BYD, Geely, Foxconn, and other manufacturing customers. UBTech is real, with verified commercial pilots; the company distinguishes itself from the US private humanoid cohort by being publicly listed with disclosed financial state.

Direct equity exposure to humanoid manufacturers in 2026 is mostly limited to a small set of publicly-traded companies: UBTech Robotics (HKEX-listed Chinese maker), Tesla (NASDAQ; Optimus is one product), and Hyundai Motor Group (KRX; Boston Dynamics parent). The major US humanoid pure-plays (Figure AI, 1X Technologies, Apptronik, Agility Robotics, Sanctuary AI) are privately held and accessible only via venture-stage or accredited-investor channels. Mentee Robotics was acquired by Mobileye in January 2026. DEPLOY is not an investment advisor; this guide documents verification posture, not investment advice.

No consumer-deployed humanoid robot can cook autonomously in 2026. Demonstrations and research exist across the cohort; consumer-grade cooking capability is not verified at deployment scale. Purpose-built robotic kitchens (such as Moley Robotics, a non-humanoid installed kitchen) exist at the research-and-experimental tier near $300,000. For a general-purpose humanoid robot that can prepare meals autonomously in a customer's kitchen, the answer is years from verified consumer-deployment.

Yes, with disclosure. 1X NEO is the verified-leader for consumer-deployment laundry capability in 2026: NEO performs laundry tasks (folding, sorting, light loading) in consumer homes with explicit Expert Mode teleoperation disclosure for complex tasks. Other cohort manufacturers (Tesla Optimus, Figure 03, Apptronik Apollo, Boston Dynamics Atlas, Unitree) demonstrate clothes-folding or related manipulation but do not consumer-deploy laundry capability. Laundry is the canonical example of how task capability varies dramatically across the humanoid cohort: 1X delivers verified consumer capability with teleop disclosure; others deliver demonstrations without consumer deployment.

Humanoid robot capability in 2026 sorts into four verification tiers per DEPLOY's framework. Verified consumer-deployed: 1X NEO performs laundry, organizing, and light manipulation in customer homes with explicit teleop disclosure. Verified enterprise-deployed: Figure 03, Apptronik Apollo, Agility Digit, and UBTech Walker S2 perform manufacturing and logistics tasks at Fortune-500 customer facilities. Research and demonstration: Boston Dynamics Atlas, Tesla Optimus, and Unitree platforms show capability footage but do not deploy. Claimed future: cooking, autonomous home assistance, childcare, and general-purpose household work remain claimed across the cohort but not consumer-deployed.

Agility Robotics is a US humanoid robotics company headquartered in Albany, Oregon, with humanoid R&D heritage tracing through the Cassie research platform that preceded Digit. The Digit humanoid is the company's commercial warehouse and logistics platform, deployed in pilots at GXO Logistics (the 100,000-tote scaled-throughput anchor), Amazon Spanx Tennessee, Schaeffler, and other industrial customers. Agility is privately held, with Amazon as a strategic investor and a manufacturing facility (RoboFab) in Salem, Oregon.

PAL Robotics is a Spanish humanoid robotics company headquartered in Barcelona, founded in 2004 with extensive European research-consortium history. The TALOS is the company's full-size adult bipedal humanoid platform, positioned for research-institution deployment rather than consumer or scaled-enterprise commercial use. PAL extends DEPLOY's humanoid manufacturer cohort to European context, representing a distinct geographic-and-strategic position from the American, Chinese, and Canadian cohort members.

Humanoid robots are bipedal robots with arms, hands, and roughly human-like proportions designed to operate in human environments and perform general-purpose tasks (Tesla Optimus, 1X NEO, Figure 03, Apptronik Apollo, Boston Dynamics Atlas, Unitree G1). Industrial robots are fixed-base manipulator arms designed for specific factory-automation tasks at high precision and reliability (FANUC, Universal Robots, KUKA, ABB). The categories share the word 'robot' but operate at substantively different scales (industrial robotics is a mature commercial category with hundreds of thousands of installed units; humanoid robotics is an emerging category with consumer-deployment at single-manufacturer scale).

An autonomous mobile robot (AMR) is a robot that navigates dynamic environments without fixed paths, using onboard perception and planning to avoid obstacles and reach destinations. AMRs differ from automated guided vehicles (AGVs) which follow fixed routes, and from automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) which operate on predefined grids. The category spans warehouse logistics (Symbotic, Locus, Geek+, Berkshire Grey, AutoStore, Ocado, MiR), captive industrial deployments (Amazon Robotics Fleet, Boston Dynamics Stretch), and hybrid grid-AS/RS+AMR systems. Per DEPLOY's framework, AMRs sit within the broader physical AI category alongside autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, and AI-augmented industrial automation.

A construction robot is a robot that performs construction tasks (excavation, layout, drilling, masonry, framing, rebar tying, paving, 3D printing) in field environments. The category spans real commercial deployments at scale (Built Robotics autonomous excavation contracts; ICON multi-home completions) and marketing-grade demonstration platforms still working toward commercial verification. Per DEPLOY's framework, construction robotics sits within the broader physical AI category alongside AVs, humanoids, AMRs, and industrial automation, with structurally distinct operational design domain (unstructured outdoor work sites with weather + safety + multi-trade coordination constraints).

Robotics value chain operates across three structural tiers. Brain-provider tier companies (Skild AI, Physical Intelligence, Covariant, Google DeepMind, OpenAI Robotics, NVIDIA Project GR00T) build foundation models for robotics without making hardware. OEM-platform tier companies (Figure AI, Apptronik, 1X Technologies, Tesla, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Unitree, UBTech) build robot hardware platforms with integrated brains. Deployment tier represents real-world operation at customer facilities (BMW Spartanburg, GXO Flowery Branch, Mercedes-Benz pilots). The three tiers operate complementarily; understanding which tier a company occupies is essential for evaluating its competitive position and verification posture.

The Figure 02 humanoid robot has operated in production at BMW Group's Spartanburg, South Carolina plant since August 2024, contributing to the assembly of more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles over an 11-month deployment that accumulated 1,250 hours of runtime handling more than 90,000 parts in chassis-assembly tasks. The deployment is the canonical commercial humanoid manufacturing reference for the cohort, with end-product OEM acceptance verification distinguishing it from peer humanoid deployments. BMW Group has announced expansion to its Plant Leipzig facility as the second humanoid production site. Figure's current-generation Figure 03 is deployed at Catalyst Brands Reno, not at BMW; BMW Spartanburg remains the Figure 02 deployment anchor as of mid-2026.

The Figure 03 humanoid is deployed at Catalyst Brands' Reno, Nevada distribution logistics center in a pilot operation that represents Figure AI's verified non-manufacturing deployment context. Catalyst Brands is the corporate parent of Forever 21, Brooks Brothers, Aeropostale, Lucky Brand, Nautica, and other retail brands under the SPARC Group restructuring. The Reno deployment is Figure's logistics-and-distribution operational reference, complementing the Figure 02 BMW Spartanburg manufacturing reference and demonstrating Figure's dual-vertical commercial strategy across two structurally distinct deployment contexts.

Apptronik's Apollo humanoid is deployed at Mercedes-Benz's Berlin-Marienfelde manufacturing facility in a pilot operation that represents Apollo's premium-segment automotive verification reference. The Mercedes-Benz partnership is one of three Apptronik enterprise customer relationships (alongside GXO Logistics and Jabil) that together establish Apollo's three-customer enterprise-deployment breadth strategy, structurally distinct from Figure AI's dual-vertical positioning and Agility's single-vertical depth specialization.

Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid is deployed at Hyundai Metaplant America's Savannah, Georgia EV manufacturing facility in a pilot operation that represents Atlas's verified enterprise customer relationship. The deployment is structurally distinguished by Hyundai's corporate-parent relationship with Boston Dynamics (Hyundai Motor Group acquired Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in 2021), creating a maker-customer relationship that differs from the arms-length customer relationships of cohort peers Figure-BMW, Apptronik-Mercedes, and Agility-GXO.

DEPLOY thinks about robot insurance as a four-dimension actuarial framework operating recursively across the verified-vs-claimed throughline: deployment-incident-recall actuarial depth (61 verified incidents at primary-source-anchored severity + root-cause + regulatory-action depth; exposure denominators absent at most deployments); manufacturer financial-state / counterparty risk (114 investors + 58 funding rounds + 29 acquisitions verified; financial state vs relationship state distinction); supply-chain component failure analysis (absent as structured substrate; bounded to safety-critical components when authored); regulatory clearance per jurisdiction (34 verified filings lopsided 94% US-FDA-only; jurisdictional completeness is the load-bearing gating layer for insurability per region). The discipline that distinguishes DEPLOY's framework from the broader insurance-discourse cohort: honest 'insurability unknown for this region / no exposure data' is more valuable than a fabricated rate. Cap-flag-as-trust-signal operates recursively on actuarial framing.

DEPLOY tracks partnership lifecycle state as a four-state framework operating at relationship-graph granularity: announced (verified-from-press-release; not-yet-active) → active (verified-deployed or verified-shipped; current_status=true) → dissolved (terminated; current_status=false with end_date populated) → unverified-current-state (announced-but-no-update-since; cap-flag honest-absence). Per Agent A's Arc C substrate, 18 partnerships + 32 parties + 14 external counterparties (via XOR pattern) + NVIDIA 4-counterparty multi-party-partnership node verified at primary-source-anchored depth. The canonical lifecycle worked example: Figure × OpenAI announced 2024 → dissolved February 2025 (status=dissolved + endDate populated). The external-name XOR pattern (partnership_parties.company_id when counterparty is tracked entity; external_name when counterparty is genuinely not-in-registry; OpenAI + Uber + Nissan + Microsoft as canonical worked examples) operates as verification-posture discipline at relationship-graph granularity. Cap-flag-as-trust-signal operates recursively on partnership framing.

DEPLOY tracks Phase 3 Dim 2 manufacturer counterparty risk substrate at primary-source-anchored verification depth per Agent A's mfs=7 manufacturer_financial_states baseline backfill: Intuitive Surgical FY2024 $8.35B (sec_10k; mature; counterparty=low) + Stryker nine-month 2024 $16.16B (sec_10q; mature; counterparty=low; SEC-verified-figure-with-narrower-precision-cap-flag CANONICAL worked example) + Zimmer Biomet FY2024 $7.68B (sec_8k; mature; counterparty=low) + Boston Dynamics private_reported NULL revenue (mature; counterparty=low via Hyundai ~80% parent-backing CANONICAL worked example for counterparty-risk-by-parent-backing classification) + Apptronik private_reported NULL (growth; counterparty=moderate; recent $350M Series A Feb 2025) + Figure AI private_reported NULL (growth; counterparty=moderate; ~$1B Series C 2025 at ~$39B reported valuation) + 1X Technologies private_reported NULL (growth; counterparty=moderate; 2024 Series B ~$100M EQT-led + subsequent 2025 round). Cap-flag-as-trust-signal recursive at three substantive layers: SEC-verified-figure-with-narrower-precision-cap-flag pattern (Stryker Q3 nine-month $16,159M used instead of unverified FY extrapolation; verified-vs-claimed at sub-fiscal-period granularity) + honest-absence on private-financials USD fields (Apptronik + Figure + 1X all NULL revenue at honest-absence cap-flag pending primary-source disclosure) + cash_runway_basis NULL when cash_runway_months NULL across the board (validator-aware discipline; cash_runway_months not publicly-disclosed for any of these makers; cash_runway_basis stays NULL preserving validator integrity). Counterparty-risk-by-parent-backing classification discipline as canonical: Boston Dynamics counterparty=low via Hyundai ~80% subsidiary parent-backing vs Apptronik/Figure/1X counterparty=moderate as growth-stage privates without parent-backing.

Quadruped robots are four-legged autonomous mobile platforms that can traverse rough terrain, stairs, and environments where wheeled robots cannot operate. The primary commercial applications are industrial inspection (Boston Dynamics Spot, ANYbotics ANYmal), defense and security (Ghost Robotics Vision 60), research (Unitree Go2), and consumer experimentation. Quadrupeds are structurally distinct from humanoid robots.

Boston Dynamics Spot is a quadruped robot launched commercially in 2020, designed for industrial inspection, construction survey, and hazardous environment monitoring. Spot can carry sensor payloads and, with the optional arm attachment, manipulate objects. Hyundai Motor Group acquired Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in 2021. Base Spot starts at approximately $75,000.