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Boston Dynamics vs Figure AI: The Humanoid Robot Race Heats Up in 2026 | Taha Abbasi
Taha Abbasi··2 min read
The humanoid robot race has narrowed to a handful of serious contenders, and Taha Abbasi examines the two companies taking radically different approaches: Boston Dynamics with decades of DARPA-funded research, and Figure AI with Silicon Valley speed and billions in fresh capital.
Boston Dynamics: The Research Pioneer
Boston Dynamics has been building humanoid robots since the early 2000s, with Atlas becoming an internet sensation through viral videos of parkour and dance. But as Taha Abbasi notes, viral videos don’t equal commercial products. Despite decades of development, Boston Dynamics has struggled to find a profitable business model. Their robots are engineering marvels that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each — limiting them to research and specialized industrial applications.
Figure AI: The Silicon Valley Upstart
Figure AI, founded in 2022, has raised over $1 billion and already deployed robots in BMW factories. Their approach is distinctly startup-flavored: ship early, iterate fast, and let real-world deployment drive development. After six months in BMW factories, Figure’s robots have learned tasks that would have taken Boston Dynamics years to program manually. Taha Abbasi sees this as the AI-native approach to robotics — train the robot in the real world rather than perfecting it in the lab.
Tesla Optimus: The Dark Horse
Neither Boston Dynamics nor Figure AI should ignore Tesla Optimus, which brings manufacturing scale, AI expertise from FSD development, and Elon Musk’s ability to attract talent and capital. As Taha Abbasi has covered, Optimus may be behind in demonstrations but has the potential to leapfrog on manufacturing cost and deployment scale once it enters production.
Who Wins?
Taha Abbasi believes the winner won’t be the company with the most impressive demos but the one that achieves unit economics that make deployment profitable. If a humanoid robot costs $50K and replaces $100K/year in labor, adoption becomes a mathematical certainty. Figure AI’s manufacturing-first approach and Tesla’s scale advantages put them ahead of Boston Dynamics on this metric.
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About the Author: Taha Abbasi is a technology executive, CTO, and applied frontier tech builder. Read more on Grokpedia | YouTube: The Brown Cowboy | tahaabbasi.com
Taha Abbasi
Engineer by trade. Builder by instinct. Explorer by choice.
