Brett Adcock Founded Figure AI After Vettery and Archer

Founder of Figure AI and Hark

Brett Adcock is the founder and chief executive officer of Figure AI. He founded Figure AI in 2022. Adcock also serves as the founder and chief executive officer of Hark, an artificial intelligence lab he started in late 2025.

Figure AI is a humanoid robotics company.

Adcock lives in Palo Alto, California. He is married and has three children.

Illinois Farm and Florida Degree

Brett Adcock grew up on a corn and soybean farm in Illinois. Forbes describes him as the child of third-generation farmers.

Adcock holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Florida.

Vettery and Its Sale to Adecco

Brett Adcock co-founded Vettery with Adam Goldstein as a digital professional permanent recruitment marketplace. Vettery used machine learning to match employers with candidates. Vettery focused its matching services primarily on open positions in information technology, sales, and finance.

Vettery started operations in New York. According to The Adecco Group, the marketplace operated in seven major metropolitan areas by early 2018. TechCrunch reported that Vettery raised $11.9 million in total venture funding. More than 4,000 employers used Vettery to find and recruit job applicants.

Sources give different founding years for Vettery. The Adecco Group and TechCrunch state that Vettery launched in 2014, whereas Forbes says Vettery was founded in 2012. The Adecco Group announced its acquisition of Vettery on 20 February 2018 without disclosing the official transaction price. TechCrunch reported that the purchase price was a little over $100 million, citing a source. Adcock and Goldstein kept running Vettery inside The Adecco Group.

Archer Aviation Co-CEO Years

Brett Adcock is a co-founder of Archer Aviation, and his last management title there was co-CEO. Archer completed a business combination with a special purpose acquisition company on 16 September 2021.

The combined business began public trading on the New York Stock Exchange on 17 September 2021 under ticker ACHR. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings show the transaction generated about $857.6 million in gross proceeds, which included a $600 million private placement.

On 18 April 2022, Archer Aviation announced a corporate leadership transition. The board appointed Adam Goldstein as sole chief executive officer. Archer's stated reason was to streamline its operating structure and advance its flight test and certification programme. Adcock remained on the Archer Aviation Board of Directors following the transition. Wisk sued Archer, alleging trade-secret theft. The companies announced a legal settlement on 10 August 2023 with an agreement to collaborate on autonomous flight. AIN Online's report on the settlement does not name Adcock.

Brett Adcock's Tenure at Figure AI

Brett Adcock founded Figure AI in 2022 and has served as its chief executive officer since its inception. In February 2024, Figure AI announced a $675 million Series B funding round at a $2.6 billion valuation alongside a collaboration agreement with OpenAI. On 4 February 2025, Figure AI announced it was leaving its OpenAI deal to build artificial intelligence models in-house. Adcock told TechCrunch that embodied AI at scale requires a company to "vertically integrate robot AI."

Figure AI introduced Helix on 20 February 2025 as a generalist Vision-Language-Action model. Helix controls a humanoid robot's whole upper body. Figure AI reached a $39 billion post-money valuation in its September 2025 Series C. Parkway Venture Capital led the round, which secured over $1 billion in capital commitments.

Figure AI unveiled Figure 03 on 9 October 2025. The robot is a third-generation humanoid engineered for mass production, commercial deployments, and home applications. Figure AI ran an 11-month deployment of Figure 02 at BMW's plant in South Carolina. The deployment loaded more than 90,000 sheet metal parts and contributed to more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles, as Figure AI reported in November 2025. Figure 03 pricing is covered on the Figure 03 price page.

Cover and Hark Ventures

Brett Adcock founded Cover to screen school entryways for concealed weapons. TechCrunch reported on it in June 2024, noting that Adcock was self-funding the project with about $2 million. Cover uses scanning technology exclusively licensed from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Adcock founded Hark in late 2025 as an artificial intelligence research lab. He contributed $100 million of his own money to finance the initial establishment of Hark. The lab focuses on training multimodal AI models. Hark plans to build hardware for a personal AI assistant later.

On 21 May 2026, Hark completed a $700 million Series A funding round at a $6 billion post-money valuation. Parkway Venture Capital led the round. Hark had 70 employees at the time.

Figure AI Stake and Forbes Net Worth

Forbes lists his real-time net worth at $23.4 billion as of 17 September 2026, ranking him #111 in the world, and classes him as self-made. Forbes estimates that Adcock owns about 50 percent of Figure AI. Forbes's real-time estimates change daily.

For broader hardware sector context, see the humanoid robot price comparison. Readers can also review the profile of Wang Xingxing for another robotics founder.

Production Numbers to Watch

Figure AI's BotQ facility can initially make up to 12,000 humanoids a year. Figure AI's goal is 100,000 humanoids over four years.

Hark has stated plans to build hardware for a personal AI assistant. Readers can compare Figure AI's technical approach in the Figure 03 vs Tesla Optimus analysis.