Bezos-Backed Figure AI Faces Whistleblower Suit Accusing Company of Ignoring "Lethal" Robot Risks

Figure AI is facing its first real public stress test after a former safety engineer filed a lawsuit accusing the company of firing him for warning that its humanoid robots might be capable of causing serious harm… including, in his words, having enough force to “fracture a human skull.”

The complaint, filed Friday in the Northern District of California, comes from Robert Gruendel, who served as a principal robotic safety engineer at the startup. He says he was let go in September, just days after he delivered what he called his “most direct and documented safety complaints” about the company’s robots. Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory, and punitive damages, and is demanding a jury trial.

According to the suit, Gruendel repeatedly warned executives (including CEO Brett Adcock and chief engineer Kyle Edelberg) that the company’s humanoid robots posed significant risks in their current form. 

At one point, he says, a malfunctioning robot carved a quarter-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door, an incident he believed clearly demonstrated the danger of deploying the machines too quickly. He says his warnings were dismissed as getting in the way of the company’s push to scale quickly.

Gruendel says he had been asked to prepare a detailed safety roadmap for prospective investors, but alleges that his work was “gutted” before being included in a presentation tied to a large funding round. In February, Figure AI raised $675 million from a who’s who of tech and AI household names… Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel’s venture arm, and a vehicle owned by Jeff Bezos among them. 

The company has told investors it expects to deploy more than 200,000 robots globally by 2029, a plan it claims could generate roughly $9 billion in annual revenue.

Figure AI pushed back on the allegations, saying Gruendel was terminated for performance-related reasons and that his account is filled with “falsehoods” the company intends to disprove in court. It also dismissed the suggestion that it misled investors, insisting that safety is a core part of its development process.

Still, the suit highlights a real tension facing the entire humanoid robotics industry. Companies like Figure (which is racing to create human-like robots capable of factory work, warehouse labor, and eventually in-home tasks) are moving at a speed that makes some engineers uneasy. 

The technology has advanced rapidly, and investors are pouring in money at a pace reminiscent of the early days of commercial AI models. That combination has raised questions about whether startups are prioritizing growth over guardrails.

Gruendel’s attorney, Robert Ottinger, said his client’s case may be one of the first whistleblower lawsuits centered on humanoid robot safety, and argued that the rush to commercialize machines that interact directly with people could create bigger risks if not carefully managed. 

He says Gruendel repeatedly pushed for a more robust safety plan, only to be met with vague explanations about changing business priorities before his termination.

It’ll take time to see how this case unfolds or what it might reveal about the company’s internal decision-making. But even at this stage, the allegations point to a rollout that could be more complicated than Figure AI lets on. 

And for a sector that needs people to feel comfortable standing next to a six-foot-tall robot, the lawsuit arrives at a moment when confidence is in short supply.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon, Microsoft, and Intel as mentioned in the article.