Amazon Pulled Out of Figure’s Huge Funding Round at the Last Minute
Amazon made a last-minute decision to pull out of investing in Figure earlier this year, a funding round that valued the AI robotics startup at $2.6 billion.
In February, Figure announced it raised $675 million from companies including Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Figure’s press release announcing the deal did not mention Amazon, though. And the Industrial Innovation Fund’s website doesn’t list Figure as a portfolio company.
Business Insider has now learned that Amazon pulled out of the deal at the last minute.
Two investors in Figure’s funding round told BI that Amazon had committed to invest $50 million at one point. And the tech giant’s name even showed up in a Figure pitch deck they received. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
It’s unclear what prompted Amazon to back out. One person with knowledge of the situation pointed to Figure’s commitment to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, a partnership announced as part of the $675 million funding round. Another person said there are many factors that go into decisions like this, not just cloud vendor agreements.
In early March, Figure CEO Brett Adcock wrote on X that traditional venture capitalists rarely fund Deep Tech companies because they prefer software companies over those focused on hardware development. Deep Tech is the term used to describe advanced technology based on highly sophisticated science or engineering techniques.
Though Figure didn’t get Amazon to invest, the robotics startup is still closely linked to the e-commerce giant through Bezos.
Amazon’s founder invested $100 million in Figure’s February round through one of his investment firms, Explore LLC, making him the largest backer for that financing, according to the two investors who spoke to BI.
In fact, Bezos was so bullish about Figure’s technology that there were rumors of him wanting to invest $200 million at the time, one of the people said. Bezos’s representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to provide a statement for this story. Figure’s representative didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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