Robert Gruendel, Figure AI’s former head of product safety, filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging he was wrongfully terminated after warning CEO Brett Adcock and chief engineer Kyle Edelberg that the company’s humanoid robots were powerful enough to fracture a human skull. The suit cites a robot that carved a quarter-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction, and describes a 2021 incident in which a malfunctioning robotic arm pinned Gruendel and dug into his back and arm before a coworker hit the emergency stop. Figure said Gruendel was terminated for poor performance and called the allegations false. The case is among the first whistleblower lawsuits over humanoid robot safety.