Lawsuit alleges Figure AI humanoid punched refrigerator beside a worker

What happened

This entry records an allegation made in litigation, not an independently confirmed event. On November 21, 2025, a robotics safety engineer who had been Figure AI’s head of product safety sued the company in federal court in the Northern District of California, claiming he was fired on September 2, 2025 in retaliation for raising safety concerns. The entry is dated to the filing because the complaint gives no date or location for the robot event it describes.

The complaint alleges that an employee was standing next to an F.02 (Figure 02) humanoid when the robot malfunctioned and punched a refrigerator, narrowly missing the employee. According to the complaint, the blow left a gash a quarter of an inch deep in the refrigerator’s stainless-steel door. The complaint offers the episode as support for its claim that near misses were occurring at the company without being tracked.

Separately, the complaint alleges that during impact testing of an F.02 on July 28, 2025, with the robot programmed to hit at full strength, the robot moved at what the complaint calls super-human speed and an impact meter recorded forces about twenty times the pain threshold in ISO 15066, a specification for collaborative robots. The engineer says he estimated the force at more than twice what is needed to fracture an adult human skull. The lawsuit does not allege that any person was struck or injured.

The system involved

Figure 02, referred to in the court filings as F.02, is a general-purpose humanoid robot developed by Figure AI. The complaint states that the company’s principal place of business is San Jose, California, and that the engineer was hired in October 2024 as principal robotic safety engineer reporting to the chief executive.

The filings do not say how the robot was being controlled at the time of the alleged refrigerator strike, or what task it was performing. The complaint refers to a risk assessment for home data collection by Figure employees and to the company’s plans for robots used in homes.

Investigation and response

Figure AI has rejected the engineer’s account. A company spokesperson told CNBC that he was terminated for poor performance and described his allegations as falsehoods that the company would discredit in court. In its answer filed on January 16, 2026, Figure admitted that impact testing of F.02 took place on July 28, 2025, denied the complaint’s characterization of the test results, and denied the paragraph describing the refrigerator strike.

On the same day Figure filed counterclaims against the engineer alleging trade secret misappropriation under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, violation of California’s computer data access law, breach of a proprietary information agreement, and failure to repay a signing bonus. The engineer filed an answer to the counterclaims on February 3, 2026.

The court approved the parties’ stipulation selecting private alternative dispute resolution on August 10, 2026. The public docket showed filings as recently as November 9, 2026 and no ruling on the merits. No regulatory investigation of the alleged event was identified.

What is not established

The complaint does not state when or where the alleged refrigerator strike happened, what the robot was doing, or how it was being controlled. Figure denies the allegation, and no independent record of the event has been published. The force estimates are the engineer’s own and are disputed by the company.