Nscale Inks $3.5 Billion Deal With Robotics Firm Figure

Artificial intelligence firm Nscale has entered into a significant, multi-year deal with humanoid robotics company Figure, committing at least $3.5 billion, with the potential to go up to $6 billion, to develop Figure's AI models and robots. Nscale's founder and CEO, Josh Payne, expressed excitement about the partnership, stating that the collaboration will push the boundaries of AI in robotics.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nscale will acquire a stake in Figure and serve as its preferred compute provider, supporting the development of Figure's next-generation Helix models and physical humanoid systems. The initial GPUs are set to be deployed starting in the second half of next year in Barstow, Texas, with Nscale potentially utilizing up to 100,000 Nvidia chips to meet Figure's computational demands.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the potential of this partnership, describing humanoid robots as the next frontier for physical AI and emphasizing that the collaboration will create a "physical AI flywheel" to accelerate the transition from AI models to real-world robots. This announcement follows another recent agreement, where Anthropic agreed to pay Nscale $45 billion for cloud computing power from their West Virginia data center.

The robotics industry is experiencing a surge in demand, with American businesses ordering 8,940 robots worth $622 million during the second quarter, marking a 4.3% increase from the same period in 2025 and a 21.3% increase compared to the second quarter of 2024. This trend indicates that companies are not only purchasing more robots but are also paying higher prices for more advanced machines.