Who Is Brett Adcock? The Founder of Figure AI and Hark

Brett Adcock is the founder and chief executive officer of humanoid robotics developer Figure AI and personal intelligence company Hark.

Hark released its free Hark Pro assistant app on October 6, 2026. By April 2026, Figure had raised output of its Figure 03 robot from one a day to one an hour.

Before establishing Figure AI in 2022 and Hark in late 2025, Adcock founded talent marketplace Vettery. He also founded electric air-taxi company Archer Aviation.

Who Brett Adcock Is

Brett Adcock is the founder and CEO of humanoid-robot maker Figure AI and AI lab Hark. Investors valued Figure at $39 billion in September 2025 and Hark at $6 billion in May 2026.

According to his biographical profile, Adcock grew up on a third-generation farm in central Illinois. He later studied at the University of Florida. His personal website claims "20+ years of creating the future" and lists four projects: Figure, Cover, Archer and Vettery. Hark was not on that list as of October 10, 2026.

In October 2026, Forbes described Adcock as the chief executive officer of three distinct enterprises: Figure AI, Hark, and weapons-detection firm Cover.

• Current role: Founder and chief executive officer of Figure AI and Hark
• Active companies: Figure AI, Hark, and Cover
• Known for: Building general-purpose humanoid robots and autonomous computer-use agents
• Education: Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Florida
• In the news: Launching Hark Pro in October 2026 and scaling production of the Figure 03 humanoid robot

Entrepreneurial Career of Brett Adcock from Vettery to Archer Aviation

Brett Adcock established his early commercial track record by founding recruiting marketplace Vettery in 2012 and electric aircraft manufacturer Archer Aviation in 2018.

An alumni profile by the Warrington College of Business states that Adcock created his first software company at age fifteen. At age twenty-six, Adcock founded Vettery. The artificial intelligence talent marketplace matched corporate employers with job candidates.

Adcock's biography notes that recruiting conglomerate Adecco Group acquired Vettery in 2018 for $110 million. In 2020, Vettery acquired Hired.com. It subsequently rebranded the combined business as Hired.

In 2018, Adcock founded Archer Aviation. UF's profile calls it a sustainable air mobility company. His bio credits Archer with raising over $1 billion, going public at a $2.7 billion valuation and a $1.5 billion deal with United Airlines.

Adcock was Archer's co-CEO until April 18, 2022, when he gave up that post to Adam Goldstein. DroneDJ reported his resignation from the company on May 11, 2022. Adcock called his departure "bittersweet." He said he would move on to a new project to "make a positive contribution to humanity." Archer said it was "disappointed that Brett used social media to announce his decision to resign."

Cover and Concealed Weapons Detection Technology

Brett Adcock founded Cover in 2023 to develop concealed weapons scanners using sensing technology licensed from NASA.

According to TechCrunch, Cover is headquartered in Pasadena, California. Adcock's bio says Cover is developing passive scanners to detect concealed weapons. His website describes Cover as an "Invisible security force field protecting schools from guns." The sensing hardware relies on technology licensed exclusively from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Adcock contributed approximately $2 million of his personal capital to launch Cover. He compared Cover with airport scanners. Adcock told TechCrunch: "Our system is very similar to that, but it's, like, 10x more powerful and accurate."

Figure AI Robotics and Industrial Operations

Figure AI builds general-purpose humanoid robots for manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, retail and home use, according to Adcock's bio.

In Figure AI's Master Plan, Adcock stated that Figure AI aims to expand human capabilities through advanced artificial intelligence while explicitly barring its hardware from military or defense applications. TechCrunch reported in September 2022 that Adcock was "bootstrapping the Bay Area-based firm with $100 million in funding," with "a staff of around 30."

Figure's company page says F.01 "took its first steps in May 2023." Figure AI announced Figure 02 in August 2024. Figure 02 has speakers and microphones "to speak and listen to people at work," six RGB cameras, and hands with sixteen degrees of freedom.

On October 9, 2025, Figure AI introduced Figure 03. The commercial humanoid featured nine percent lower mass than Figure 02, tactile fingertip sensors capable of detecting forces down to three grams, and two-kilowatt inductive charging coils in its feet. In April 2026, Figure AI documented a production ramp at its BotQ manufacturing facility, increasing assembly output from one robot daily to one unit per hour.

On September 30, 2026, Figure AI announced that it decommissioned its Figure 02 fleet, melting robots at a foundry in Imatra, Finland. It noted that maintaining the fleet no longer made sense as Figure 03 grew. It also mentioned an upcoming Figure 04 launch.

Figure AI Capital Rounds and Model Architecture

Figure AI's reported outside funding includes a $675 million Series B in 2024 and a Series C of more than $1 billion in committed capital in 2025.

In February 2024, Figure AI closed a $675 million Series B at a $2.6 billion post-money valuation, TechCrunch reported. Investors included Microsoft, the OpenAI Startup Fund, NVIDIA, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Jeff Bezos through Bezos Expeditions, Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures, and ARK Invest. The same day, Figure announced a collaboration with OpenAI to "develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots."

In February 2025, Figure AI concluded its collaboration with OpenAI to focus on internally developed foundation models, as reported by TechCrunch. That same month, Figure AI introduced Helix. The Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model provides high-rate continuous neural network control across a humanoid robot's entire upper body.

In September 2025, Figure AI finalized a Series C funding round. It secured more than $1 billion in committed capital at a $39 billion post-money valuation. Parkway Venture Capital led the round. Brookfield Asset Management, Macquarie Capital, Nvidia, Intel Capital, LG Technology Ventures, T-Mobile Ventures, and Salesforce also participated. In September 2026, Figure announced a partnership with Nscale, per its news page. The partnership is for up to 100,000 GPUs on NVIDIA Vera Rubin.

Hark and Autonomous Agent Infrastructure

Hark is a personal intelligence company founded by Brett Adcock in late 2025 to develop autonomous computer-use agents and consumer hardware devices.

According to TechCrunch, Adcock launched Hark with $100 million of personal capital before raising more than $700 million in a May 2026 Series A at a $6 billion post-money valuation. Parkway Venture Capital led the funding round. Backers included Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Greycroft, ARK Invest, and Salesforce Ventures.

Former Apple product executive Abidur Chowdhury runs design at Hark. TechCrunch calls him director of design, and PYMNTS calls him head of design. As quoted by PYMNTS, Adcock said: "We're working on a family of AI devices both for yourself and for the home."

In August 2026, Hark published Hark Handoff. Hark calls the research preview "a computer use agent built for long-horizon, autonomous work on the internet." Handoff gives each request a dedicated virtual computer with its own browser, file system and terminal. Hark then formed a strategic partnership with AT&T. AT&T is investing in Hark and working on device certification and connectivity for devices that run untethered from a phone or Wi-Fi. A multi-year compute agreement with Nvidia for "gigawatt-scale" compute on Vera Rubin followed.

Hark Pro Architecture and Subscription Tiers

Hark Pro is an autonomous personal software assistant released on October 6, 2026, that executes multi-step internet workflows through dedicated virtual computers.

Hark pitches Hark Pro as "The operating system for your life." Hark Pro runs on Handoff, which can use up to six browsers at once, and adds memory and proactive features such as Projects, Home, Action Buttons and Panels. Hark Pro includes "Secured by Hark," an encrypted vault for cards and passwords. Hark's launch post says it will never sell user data or share it with advertisers.

Hark publishes pricing tiers featuring a baseline free tier. A Pro² tier at $20 monthly offers double standard capacity, while a Pro³ tier at $100 monthly offers ten times standard capacity. All features are in every plan. Hark does not publish the usage limits behind the multipliers.

Corporate Discrepancies and Contested Record Details

Accounts of Adcock's record differ on his Archer tenure, his role in Archer's aircraft and the number of Figure robots at BMW.

Adcock says he "architected, engineered and flight-tested five generations of aircraft" at Archer, and Archer calls that "wildly inaccurate," Forbes reports. Adcock's personal website states that his involvement at Archer Aviation spans from 2018 to the present. DroneDJ reported his resignation from the company in May 2022. Meanwhile, Forbes describes Archer as a company he left in 2022.

Divergent accounts also exist regarding Figure AI's commercial testing at BMW Group Plant Spartanburg in South Carolina. Figure's own report says Figure 02 logged more than 1,250 hours and loaded over 90,000 parts at the plant over 11 months. In February 2025, Adcock posted that BMW had "a fleet of robots performing end-to-end operations." BMW told Fortune only one Figure robot worked at a time. Adcock called Fortune's reporting "mischaracterizations and downright lies."

Forbes reports that BMW said a June test used two or three robots. Adcock says it was "six or eight." Headcount records at Hark have also varied across reporting periods. TechCrunch recorded approximately seventy employees in May 2026, while Forbes recorded roughly one hundred workers in October 2026.

Published Net Worth Estimates for Brett Adcock and Valuation Records

Forbes Australia published an estimate of Brett Adcock's net worth at $23.4 billion.

The estimate ran on October 7, 2026, with no separate as-of date. Figure "refuses to disclose revenue," Forbes also reports.

Addressing Figure AI's valuation, Adcock told Forbes, "I think $40 billion is probably really cheap." He also told Forbes, "I think Figure and Hark are going to explode this year and next." Figure's September 30 post mentions an upcoming F.04 launch, and Hark has published no launch date for the hardware it says it is designing.