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 security technician takes on the role of Cassandra while a robotics company moves forward in trying to commercialize a powerful humanoid robot with alleged bone-crushing abilities. The situation becomes more and more dire – and unbearable for the security officer – and eventually, company leadership reportedly gets rid of him so they can build their own Terminator in peace.
These are just allegations, to be perfectly clear, and a spokesperson for the company, Figure AI, has told CNBC that the security technician was “terminated for poor performance.” The spokesperson further claimed that the claims made in the lawsuit are “false that will completely discredit Figures in court.”
If the lawsuit — framed as a case of alleged retaliatory termination against a whistleblower — is indeed fictional, it’s the beginning of a blockbuster. This calls for interesting corporate plays like Michael Clayton Or insiderwith a jerk robocop,
You might remember Figure AI. The company released a stunning demo of its 01 model last year that showed a humanoid robot responding to spoken, open-ended commands by performing tasks of its choice. For example, a request to “eat something” results in the robot gently handing the user an apple.
The plaintiff, Robert Gruendel, a robotics security engineer who once worked in R&D for Amazon, according to his LinkedIn, says he joined Figure just after the demo was built. The lawsuit, filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California, claims that in his first week on the job, he discovered that Fig had “no formal safety procedures, incident-reporting system, or risk-assessment process for the robots,” and the only other person responsible for the workers’ safety was an outside contractor with experience in chip manufacturing, not the robots.
Most of the mentions of robots in suits relate to the 02 model in the figure, shown below:
Initially, as described in the lawsuit, company executives were receptive to these concerns when Gruendel raised them, and CEO Brett Adcock and chief engineer Kyle Adelberg approved a security “roadmap.” But then, the following ominous conversation occurs with company leadership, the filing alleges:
“Adcock and Adelberg expressed dislike for the written product requirements, to which Plaintiff responded by indicating that their stance in the area of machinery safety was unusual and was of concern to him as the product safety leader.”
In the filings, company heads are often seen firing the security officer they themselves appointed. The company’s commercial vice president reportedly said at one point that Gruendel’s security orders would be ignored because the CEO “would shoot us if we did.”
In early 2025, pressure on Gruendel increased when CEO Adcock reportedly asked Gruendel “what it would take to put a figure robot in the house.” According to the lawsuit, Gruendel, concerned about the power of robots and the unpredictability of AI at its core, designs another “roadmap”, publishes it internally, and holds a meeting about it which the CEO skips. So, allegedly, Gruendel writes a condensed version and sends it to the CEO, but it is ignored.
Investors allegedly find a fairly comprehensive security plan they like, after which company leadership downgrades it, according to the suit, with Gruendel warning leaders that it “could be interpreted as fraud.”
Then things get really cinematic in the lead up to Gruendel’s September 2025 shootout. The suit says that in July, Gruendel conducted safety tests that included measuring how hard the robot could hit. “During impact testing, [the robot moves] at super-human speed,” and produces force “twenty times greater than the pain threshold.” According to Gruendel’s calculations, it produces “more than twice the force required to fracture an adult human skull.”
According to the lawsuit, the next day, the company’s vice president of development contacted Gruendel to tell him that he had received a raise in the amount of $10,000 per year along with an appreciative note about Gruendel’s “continued growth and impact on the figure.” The said note also acknowledged Gruendel’s “persistent efforts” and “positive mindset.”
After receiving her raise, and apparently undeterred, she sent a Slack message to the CEO saying the robot could cause “serious permanent injury to humans,” which would again be ignored, the lawsuit alleges. So the lawsuit says he tried to reach out to the chief engineer and told him that Figer “needed to take immediate action to move employees away from robots.”
Gruendel began to worry, the lawsuit says, that mistakes were being made too often, and there was no system in place to track them. And then:
”This conclusion was further illustrated by an example where an employee was standing next to [a robot] and this [robot] The refrigerator malfunctioned and a punch was thrown into it, narrowly missing the employee. The robot left a ¼-inch deep gash in the stainless-steel door of the refrigerator.
So Gruendel, as depicted in the suit, is doing everything it can to add an emergency stop button to robot systems in the workplace to protect workers who have to be near it. The lawsuit alleges that the company cooperated with the effort and then more or less abandoned it. Also, a security feature reportedly gets eliminated around this time because someone doesn’t like how it looks.
Between mid-August and early September, the lawsuit alleges Gruendel’s authority within the company diminished, and he was ultimately fired by the same person who had praised him and given him a raise earlier that summer.
You can read the full filing yourself here.
As CNBC notes, Figma’s valuation has increased 15 times since last year when it received capital investments from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos and Microsoft. This year’s funding round from Parkway Venture Capital valued the company at $39 billion.
As the viral reaction to 1x Technologies’ recent Neo robot shows, it seems there is a race underway to bring home humanoid robots to market. And of course, there are bubble concerns associated with this gold rush-style corporate mentality. In September, roboticist and iRobot founder Rodney Brooks wrote an essay claiming that “today’s humanoid robots will not learn to be dexterous, despite hundreds of millions, or perhaps even billions, of dollars being donated by VCs and major tech companies for their training.”
Gizmodo contacted Figures for additional comments about the allegations in this lawsuit, and will update if we hear back.