Good morning. Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. is backing a U.S. startup that wants to mass-produce humanoid robots for warehouses, offices and homes – the global investment firm’s newest move to anchor itself in the fast-growing AI economy. That’s in focus today, along with a look at the Bank of Canada’s not-so-great economic expectations.
Up first
In the news
Procurement: BC Ferries’ CEO criticized former transport minister Chrystia Freeland, saying he was frustrated by her public rebuke of a Chinese ship deal after giving her department six weeks’ notice.
Mining: Teck Resources Ltd. faces significant resistance from institutional investors as it pitches a merger with London-based Anglo American PLC, in part because the deal will see one of Canada’s largest miners dropped from the country’s flagship stock index.
Trade: Prime Minister Mark Carney will sign a strategic partnership on trade and security with Mexico when he visits today, in what officials are describing as a reset of their relationship.
On our radar
- A day after dining on quail eggs, courgette and braised plums with British royalty and U.S. business leaders, U.S. President Donald Trump meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat.
- The only earnings of note come from Fedex, a bellwether of the U.S. economy. It downgraded its outlook last quarter as tariffs cascaded through the economy.
- The leading U.S. index for economic activity will keep investors on their toes after yesterday’s interest rate cut. Analysts are expecting a small month-over-month decline. (See: Fedex earnings.)
Figure AI is developing autonomous, humanlike robots designed to help at work and at home.Supplied
In focus
Data centres today, dishes tomorrow
As a middle-schooler of modest distinction, I would often spend lunch hours hiding in a corner of a nearby public library, poring over every available copy of Popular Science, dreaming of the day I’d have my own robot at home. But I wasn’t yet sneaking away with copies of the Financial Times and hadn’t really considered the potential downsides of technological advancements – of a humanoid stocking library shelves, say, or a large-language model that could instantly produce jokes about investing. (I tried it with ChatGPT and found the results derivative.)
It’s with a mix of lingering childhood wonder and anxiety-induced adulthood, then, that we turn to the news of Toronto-based Brookfield investing heavily in Figure AI Inc., a California-based company that develops humanoid robots and deploys them in homes and commercial settings.
The terms
Figure, a U.S. robotics startup founded three years ago, announced yesterday that it had raised more than US$1-billion in its latest funding round, giving the private company a US$39-billion valuation.
Alongside the money Brookfield invested as part of that round, the global investment firm is offering access to its properties to help train robots in real-world spaces and may provide infrastructure such as data centres for its underlying AI model.
Factories to families
Figure is aiming to mass-produce humanoid robots and refine the AI system that powers them. At its new San Jose factory, called BotQ (Bots of the Quotidian? Batch of tomorrow, Quickly?), the company has shifted from slow, custom machining to faster methods such as moulding and casting, with the goal of turning out thousands of robots each year.
The company’s model, known as Helix, brings together vision, language and motor control so a robot can interpret its surroundings and act without step-by-step instructions. Training Helix requires large amounts of data drawn from the warehouses, offices and households where the robots are expected to operate.
The company says it aims to build general-purpose humanoids capable of adapting to unfamiliar tasks and filling roles that are difficult to staff, from warehouse shifts to elder care.
We can only hope these humanoids perform more elegantly than Tesla’s Optimus, which Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff presented last week as a “productivity game-changer” in a video demonstrating anything but.
What Brookfield’s bet suggests
The investment firm is building out an “AI infrastructure” business that brings together real estate, renewable power and data centre capacity. The company has already begun preparing a new fund to invest in the sector, part of what it describes as a multidecade opportunity to support demand from technology firms for space and energy.
Chief executive Bruce Flatt has said Brookfield intends to commit about US$200-billion to what he calls “AI factories” across North America and Europe. These facilities are meant to supply the land, power and digital infrastructure required to train and run advanced models. Vacancy rates in data centres are near record lows, and Brookfield has said it’s signing long-term contracts with major tenants rather than building speculative projects.
Long term, Brookfield says it wants to be a central provider of infrastructure for the AI economy. Executives say the business could become the largest within the company inside of a decade, reshaping Brookfield’s profile from an asset manager rooted in property and energy to one that anchors the physical backbone of AI.
What it means for humans
In the near term, deployments of Figure’s humanoid robots are likely to stay in industrial and logistics settings, where repetitive jobs and safety concerns make automation easier to justify. Long term, the company says it wants robots to work in households and offices – doing chores, helping with home care and moving stuff around.
That ambition lands in the middle of an intensifying debate about how artificial intelligence is reshaping employment. Some of the world’s largest companies are replacing entry-level jobs with AI agents, and the International Monetary Fund has warned that without reskilling programs and safety nets, the benefits of AI could deepen inequality.
Depending on how firms adopt the technology, AI could leave policymakers with a difficult trade-off between efficiency and equity.
In the meantime, I’m heading to the library.
- How AI adoption is upending the job market for entry-level workers
- Quantum leap: Canada had – and lost – its lead in AI. Can it avoid making the same mistake in the next emerging global technology race?
Charted
Rate expectations
The Bank of Canada cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point yesterday, lowering borrowing costs for the first time since March as U.S. tariffs continue to batter the Canadian economy.
- Falling interest rates expected to break ‘psychological’ barrier for mortgage holders, experts say
- Opinion: The case for a rate cut was clear, but the future remains cloudy
Bookmarked
On our reading list
At the doctor: Are annual check-ups still a thing? It depends.
In Spain: Uprooting my family to live in Valencia helped us grow in unexpected ways.
On Wall Street: Rita Trichur on why Trump is wrong (again) about nixing quarterly earnings reports.
Morning update
Global markets were upbeat after the U.S. Federal Reserve delivered its first interest rate cut this year.
Wall Street futures were in positive territory after a mixed close yesterday. TSX futures followed sentiment higher after the Bank of Canada also cut its key rate.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.72 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2 per cent, Germany’s DAX climbed 1.22 per cent and France’s CAC 40 advanced 1.15 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.15 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.65 per cent from the previous session’s four-year high.
The Canadian dollar traded at 72.63 U.S. cents.