CEO Brett Adcock revealed that Figure AI received 176,000 applications, only recruiting 425 people

“Just checked, 176,000 job applications at Figure AI in the last three years,” Adcock wrote on X. “We have hired about 425 people.”

In the series of responses that followed, he rated most of the applications as “poor quality”. Besides, checking the files himself “to find excellent people” costs him a lot of time. This CEO said he used an applicant tracking software system called ATS to recruit and screen resumes. However, he believes that the actual tool is not effective.

“In the ATS system, each view of a profile takes at least 20 seconds to click, even if the profile is not worth viewing,” CEO Figure AI wrote.

Theo Business Insiderif Adcock’s numbers are correct, Figure AI achieved a recruitment rate of 0.24% in three years – a number that is considered “harsh”. If divided equally by year (59,000 applications per year), the acceptance rate is lower than the hardest college to get into. California Institute of Technology (Caltech) – the school that has topped the world’s top university rankings voted by Times Higher Education for five consecutive years – currently has the lowest student acceptance rate at 3%, according to the US News & World Report rankings.

The proportion of job groups among the 176,000 job applications submitted is unknown. Neither Adcock nor Figure AI have commented.

Figure AI was founded in 2022 in the US but quickly became world famous, even being suspected of being exaggerated. The company is positioning its robot as a competitor in the field of humanoid robots with Tesla’s Optimus, Agility Robotics’ Digit and robots from Chinese companies such as UBTech Robotics, Unitree Robotics.

Figure AI’s latest product is Figure 03 with the ability to start quickly, change direction smoothly and brake suddenly when running in a block. The machine is designed for mass production, ready to operate in both home and industrial environments. The robot is 173 cm tall and is an upgraded version of Figure 02 with a more sensitive sensor system, softer appearance and better coordination, 9% lighter weight, soft and flexible hands, equipped with a fingertip sensor that detects extremely light pressure, only 3 grams, approximately the weight of a paperclip.