Nscale signs $3.5 billion compute deal with robotics firm Figure

Cloud compute provider Nscale signed a $3.5 billion agreement to supply computing capacity to robotics company Figure, with the deal potentially expanding to $6 billion. The agreement covers compute infrastructure rather than a specific product announcement.

Why it matters: Large dedicated compute deals for robotics companies, not just chatbot developers, signal that training and running robotics foundation models is becoming compute-intensive enough to require hyperscaler-style infrastructure commitments. It's a sign the AI infrastructure buildout is expanding beyond chatbots into physical-world AI.