Nscale, Figure partner to power physical AI

Author: Joe Peck

Nscale, a UK developer of AI data centres and cloud infrastructure, has signed a multi-year strategic partnership with humanoid robotics company Figure, including plans to deploy up to 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs to support the development of physical AI.

The initial GPUs are targeted for deployment from the second half of 2027 at Nscale’s site in Barstow, Texas, USA. The agreement includes an initial commitment of $3.5 billion (£2.5 billion) in compute, with an intention to scale the partnership beyond $6 billion (£4.4 billion).

Nscale will also become a Figure shareholder and its preferred compute provider, supporting the training and deployment of Figure’s Helix AI models for humanoid robotics.

Compute supports humanoid robotics

The partnership will use NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform and Nscale’s AI cloud infrastructure to provide compute for Figure’s models. The companies will also explore scaling Nscale’s supply chain using humanoid robots.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, has stated that the partnership will connect model training, simulation, and deployment in Figure’s robots.

He comments, “Humanoid robots extend physical AI into the world designed for people, opening a major new industry. Nscale and Figure have activated the robotics flywheel: training Figure’s models on NVIDIA Vera Rubin through Nscale’s AI cloud, validating them in NVIDIA Isaac Sim, and deploying them on NVIDIA GPUs in Figure’s robots.”

Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figure, adds, “To bring humanoid robots to every home in the world, we are largely constrained by data and compute. Our AI model, Helix, becomes more capable the same way every learned system does: with more data and compute.

“Today, we’re excited to partner with Nscale to bring the compute required to make this vision a reality.”

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