A humanoid robot walked into the White House on March 25, 2026, escorting First Lady Melania Trump into the East Room for the final day of her Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit.
The Figure 03, built by the robotics company Figure AI, addressed delegates from 45 nations and representatives from 28 technology companies before offering greetings in 10 languages and walking back down a red carpet. The company’s founder and CEO, Brett Adcock, said it was the first time a humanoid robot had entered the White House.
The 5-foot-6, 132-pound robot operates on a vision-language-action AI model called Helix, developed in-house by Figure AI. It can carry 20-kilogram payloads while walking at 1.2 meters per second and runs for five hours on a swappable 2.3 kilowatt-hour battery pack. Each hand includes embedded palm cameras and custom tactile sensors capable of detecting forces as small as three grams.
Figure AI, founded by Adcock in 2022, has raised approximately $1.9 billion in total funding and was valued at $39 billion following a $1 billion round in September 2025. Backers include Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, and the venture divisions of Amazon and OpenAI. The company uses a robot-as-a-service subscription model priced at approximately $1,000 per robot per month rather than direct hardware sales.
The summit, convened by the first lady through her Fostering the Future Together initiative, brought together spouses of world leaders to discuss empowering children through education, innovation, and technology.
The robot’s appearance at the event places humanoid robotics inside a diplomatic setting typically reserved for heads of state and senior officials, reflecting the pace at which the technology is moving from laboratory demonstrations toward public-facing deployment. Figure AI assembled its team from engineers previously at Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Google DeepMind, and Apple.
