Researcher dismantles Figure's IP excuse for destroying F.02: "awful marketing"
MarwaEldiwiny · x · 2026-10-01
Responding to Figure's justification that it destroyed the F.02 humanoid to protect IP, robotics researcher Marwa Eldiwiny rebuts the claim point by point:
- Brett Adcock had already said they were out of room and wanted to send the F.02 off, making IP a post-hoc rationale;
- Burning F.02 doesn't eliminate IP risk for F.03/F.04 — the same issue exists for every future generation;
- Figure doesn't even sell the robot yet, so nobody could see the IP; once in homes, customers could disassemble it just as people already do with Unitree robots, and leasing to retain control likely won't fly with buyers;
- Most humanoid designs are converging on similar architectures, with uniqueness mostly in parts like custom actuators.
She argues Figure could simply have preserved an F.02 behind closed doors for company history, so this was really marketing — and awful marketing for a product meant to live in people's homes.
More from Companies & People
- Cohere Labs' World Model from Scratch session 3 covers post-training and fine-tuning — Cohere_Labs · 2026-10-02
- Mistral AI hires researcher Shikhar Murty to build safety and open LLM team in Canada — ShikharMurty · 2026-10-02
- Google sunsets Gemini CLI for Antigravity, leaving devs confused about what it even is — sergeykarayev · 2026-10-02
- Trump rejects nationalizing OpenAI and Anthropic but floats Intel-style 10% equity stake — ns123abc · 2026-10-02
- Polyfork wins $500K Build with Gemini XPRIZE against 26,000+ AI builders — PeterDiamandis · 2026-10-02
- Stanford HAI faculty join Imagination in Action summit at Google Bay View — StanfordHAI · 2026-10-02