The allegations detailed in a new whistleblower lawsuit against a Silicon Valley robotics company read like the first act of a sci-fi suspense movie: a sidelined safety technician plays Cassandra while a robotics company allegedly rushes ahead trying to commercialize a powerful humanoid robot with bone-crunching capabilities. The situation gets more and more sinister—and intolerable for the safety officer—and finally, company leadership allegedly just gets rid of him so they can build their terminators in peace.
These are just allegations, to be abundantly clear, and a spokesperson for the company itself, Figure AI, has told CNBC the safety technician was “terminated for poor performance.” The claims in the lawsuit are “falsehoods that Figure will thoroughly discredit in court,” the spokesperson further claims.
If the lawsuit—framed as a case of alleged retaliatory termination against a whistleblower—is really fiction, it’s the start of a blockbuster. It invokes riveting corporate dramas like Michael Clayton or The Insider, with a dash of Robocop.
You may remember Figure AI. The company released an eye-popping demo of its 01 model last year in which a humanoid robot appeared to respond to spoken, open-ended commands by carrying out tasks of its own choosing. A request for “something to eat” results in the robot gently handing the user an apple, for instance.
The plaintiff, Robert Gruendel, a robotics safety engineer, who once worked in R&D for Amazon according to his...
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