Brett Adcock

Overview

Brett Adcock was born on 6 April 1986 in Moweaqua, Illinois.^[1] He has spent his career starting companies rather than running established ones: his ventures have moved from recruiting software to electric aircraft to humanoid robots and, most recently, to AI tools for schools and to AI models and hardware.^[1] He is the founder and chief executive officer of Figure AI.^[1]

Education

He received a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the University of Florida in 2008.^[1] A business degree of this kind covers accounting, finance, management and related subjects, but the public record of his early career begins with the companies he went on to found.

The companies he founded

In 2013 Adcock founded Vettery, a recruiting platform. It was acquired by Adecco for US$100 million in 2018.^[1] A recruiting platform is software that matches employers with candidates; an acquisition of this kind means the larger staffing company bought the startup outright.

In 2018 he founded Archer Aviation, an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft company.^[1] Aircraft of this type take off and land straight up and down like a helicopter, but are designed around electric propulsion, a combination that is technically demanding because batteries must be light enough to fly and still supply enough power. Archer listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021.^[1]

In 2022 Adcock founded Figure AI, a humanoid robotics company.^[1] Humanoid robots are machines built with a body plan resembling a person's — two arms, two legs, a torso and a head — on the argument that workplaces and homes already have environments arranged for humans. In February 2024, Figure's funding announcement identified Adcock as the company's founder and CEO.^[2] Funding announcements of this sort are the point at which a young company publicly states who leads it and how much capital it has raised.

He also founded Cover, an AI school safety company, in 2023, and Hark, an AI models and hardware company, in 2025.^[1]

Role and position

Across these companies Adcock has held the founder role, and at Figure he combines it with the chief executive position, which means he is responsible for the company's day-to-day management as well as its founding direction.^[1] The February 2024 announcement repeated that description of his role, so it is not only the company's own founding account but also the framing used when it raised outside money.^[2]

The span of these ventures is itself the notable feature of his career: a hiring marketplace, an aircraft manufacturer, a robotics company, a school safety business and a company working on AI models and hardware are different industries with different technical demands and different regulatory environments. Each was founded by him as a new company rather than grown out of an earlier one.^[1]