Silicon Valley's hottest livestream this week is a humanoid robot clocking in for a warehouse shift.
It began Wednesday, when Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock set out to prove to skeptics that his robots could complete an eight-hour stretch of autonomous labor. Within hours, Figure AI had a film crew at its San Jose headquarters and was streaming a humanoid doing one of the dullest tasks imaginable: sorting packages.
The internet was captivated. Millions tuned in to watch the robot pick up small packages and place them on a conveyor belt with the barcode facing down. Two humanoids stood on chargers in the background, ready to sub in when the working robot ran low on battery. One viewer called the feed "surprisingly addicting" and asked for a 24/7 livestream, while investor Jason Calacanis wrote that "robotic ASMR is bizarrely comforting." As the livestream climbed past 1.5 million views on X over its first eight hours, some viewers gave the three robots names: Bob, Frank, and Gary.
Figure AI reached its goal of running the robot for eight hours with "zero failures," Adcock said, and decided to keep going. By the 24-hour mark on Thursday morning, the humanoids had sorted more than 30,000 packages, with more than 3 million cumulative views.
