Why Did Figure Melt Its Old Robots in Molten Steel?
Figure sent retired Figure 02 robots into a 75-ton furnace in a Terminator 2 style film. Here's the IP logic behind the stunt.
What happened to Figure’s old robots?
Figure, the humanoid robot company led by Brett Adcock, retired its older Figure 02 units by walking them into a 75-ton electric arc furnace full of molten steel at a foundry in Outokumpu, Finland. The company filmed the event as a short called “F.02 Decommission,” styled after the molten-steel ending of Terminator 2. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reportedly suggested the Terminator-style send-off after Adcock asked online for ideas, was there in person to watch it happen.
TL;DR
- Figure retired its previous-generation Figure 02 robots by having them walk into a molten steel furnace at a foundry in Finland, with the robots trained to make the final step into the furnace on their own.
- The film was shot as a direct homage to Terminator 2, reportedly at the suggestion of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was on site in Finland for the filming.
- Figure says the melting was real, not CGI or a visual effect, which is part of why the clip spread so quickly online.
- The underlying reason is IP protection: Figure 02 units carry proprietary hardware and software that the company did not want falling into a third party’s hands through resale, disposal, or reverse engineering.
- Disassembling retired robots by hand would have required pulling engineers off active programs, and Figure judged that not worth the engineering time as it scales Figure 03 and develops Figure 04.
- The steel recovered from the furnace was shipped back to the US and machined into limited-edition memorabilia, meaning a small number of people now own a physical piece of a melted humanoid robot.
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Why would a robotics company destroy its own hardware?
Retiring a generation of robots is normal in hardware development. Companies replace old units as better ones come online. What’s unusual here is the method and the publicity around it. Most retired hardware gets quietly disassembled, recycled for parts, or shelved in a warehouse. Figure instead turned the process into a cinematic event and destroyed the units completely.
The company’s stated logic is straightforward: Figure 02 robots are packed with proprietary technology, custom actuators, sensors, onboard compute, and software that represents real competitive advantage. If those units were sold, donated, or scrapped through a conventional recycling pipeline, there’s a real risk that a competitor, researcher, or opportunist could get hands-on access to internals Figure would rather keep private. Melting the robots down in a furnace is about as complete a form of data and IP destruction as exists. There’s no circuit board to extract, no actuator to reverse-engineer, no firmware to pull off a chip.
Why not just disassemble them normally?
The simpler option, taking the robots apart by hand and recycling or destroying individual components, was reportedly considered and rejected. According to the reporting Adcock pointed to, pulling engineering staff off current work on Figure 03 and Figure 04 to manually dismantle a fleet of obsolete units wasn’t a good use of time. Figure is in active scale-up mode, and the opportunity cost of diverting technical staff toward teardown work on hardware that’s being replaced anyway didn’t make sense next to a one-time industrial process that achieves the same end state faster.
There’s also a practical wrinkle specific to humanoid robots: they’re mechanically complex, full of densely packed custom parts, and not designed to be easily disassembled the way a laptop or a phone is. Full manual teardown at fleet scale is genuinely labor intensive. A furnace solves that problem in one pass.
Is the Terminator reference just marketing?
Partly, yes, and that’s worth saying plainly. A short film of robots walking into molten steel to T2-style imagery, with Schwarzenegger present, is a marketing event by any definition. It generated exactly the kind of viral attention a staged stunt is built for. Figure is a company that depends on public perception, investor interest, and media coverage as much as any AI lab, and a Terminator homage featuring the actor from Terminator is a near-guaranteed attention generator.
But the IP rationale sits underneath the spectacle rather than being invented to justify it. Destroying retired robotic hardware to prevent reverse engineering is a legitimate, fairly common instinct in deep tech, even if it’s rarely filmed and rarely dramatized. Companies working on proprietary sensors, batteries, or defense-adjacent hardware frequently have strict end-of-life destruction protocols for exactly this reason. Figure’s version of that protocol happened to be camera-ready.
What happened to the material afterward?
The steel produced by melting the robots down was shipped back to the United States and machined into limited-edition memorabilia. That detail matters for two reasons. First, it confirms the melting was a real industrial process with real output, not a staged effect with robots removed beforehand. Second, it turns what could have been pure destruction into a collectible, extending the marketing value of the event well past the original video.
Does this signal anything about where Figure is headed?
The decommissioning lines up with where Figure says its product roadmap is going. The company is scaling up Figure 03 and developing Figure 04, meaning Figure 02 was already on its way out as the active generation of hardware. Retiring an older product line while a newer one ramps up is standard in any hardware business. What makes it notable here is that humanoid robots are new enough as a commercial category that “retiring a generation of robots” doesn’t have established norms yet. There’s no standard industry practice for what a humanoid robotics company does with thousands of obsolete, proprietary, mechanically complex units once they’re superseded. Figure’s answer, melt them down and sell the metal, might end up being one of the more memorable early answers to that question, if not the one every competitor follows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was the Figure robot furnace footage real or CGI?
According to Figure’s reporting on the event, the melting was real. The robots were trained to walk into the furnace and the steel that resulted was shipped to the US and machined into memorabilia, which would not be possible if the scene had been a visual effect.
Why did Figure destroy its old robots instead of recycling them conventionally?
Figure 02 units contain proprietary hardware and software the company wanted to prevent from reaching third parties. Conventional disassembly would also have required engineering time Figure preferred to spend on its current Figure 03 and upcoming Figure 04 programs.
Was Arnold Schwarzenegger actually involved?
Yes. Brett Adcock asked for ideas online on how to retire the old robots, Schwarzenegger suggested a Terminator 2 style ending, and he was present in Finland to watch the furnace scene filmed.
What happened to the melted robot material?
The steel was shipped back to the United States and turned into limited-edition memorabilia, giving a small number of people a physical piece of the melted hardware.
Is this common practice in robotics or AI hardware companies?
Destroying obsolete hardware to prevent IP exposure isn’t unheard of in deep tech, but filming it as a cinematic event is unusual. Most retired robotics hardware is quietly disassembled or warehoused rather than publicly destroyed.