Tesla Rival Figure Lands Deal With JCPenney Parent After Viral Package Sorting Marathon, White House Visit

Chris Katje — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:39:04 +0000

Humanoid robotics company Figure has had quite the few months of activity, with a viral appearance alongside First Lady Melania Trump at the White House and a viral package sorting marathon. The company, which is a rival to Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) announced a new commercial agreement this week.

Figure Lands Robotics Deal

Figure, which was founded by Brett Adcock, announced a commercial agreement with Catalyst Brands, an operator of several former mall staples.

"We'll work to deploy humanoid robots at scale, starting with initial deployment in Reno, NV," Adcock tweeted.

An announcement from the company said the Figure humanoid robots will be deployed into distribution and logistics with a focus on automating "physically demanding tasks within the supply chain."

Catalyst Brands is the operator of JCPenney, Aéropostale and Brooks Brothers. The brand company is owned by Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE:BAM), Simon Property Group (NYSE:SPG), Authentic Brands Group, Shein and former JCPenney investors.

Figure said the partnership shows how the company is leading the transformation of the global workforce, which includes the following:

Deployment at Scale
Workforce Modernization
Strategic Ecosystem Alignment
Brookfield is an investor in both Catalyst Brands and Figure, and the announcement says it supports the vision for the future of industrial automation.

At the time of Brookfield's investment in Figure in September, the company said it would help Figure with a real-world pretraining dataset and infrastructure to get humanoid robots into commercial settings.

"As we invest in and scale our ...

Full story available on Benzinga.com

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Tesla Rival Figure Lands Deal With JCPenney Parent After Viral Package Sorting Marathon, White House Visit

Figure Lands Robotics Deal