A Tale of Two Assembly Lines: Figure vs. Optimus, Upstream by Tettares

It was the age of vertical integration, it was the age of import globalization.

Two of the most watched humanoid programs in the world are usually covered as a contest of demos: how many degrees of freedom, how convincingly a robot folds a shirt. That framing hides the more investable question. Where do their bills of materials actually touch? Because that intersection, not the demo reel, is where a shortage or an export rule hits both at once.

As it turns out, both ages are the same age, and both robots are living in it.

The overlap is two names, and both are the parts you cannot design around. Of the suppliers we can tie to the program on both sides, exactly two appear on each. LG Energy Solution, for cells: it supplies all three US humanoid developers, Tesla, Boston Dynamics and Figure, and Optimus takes high-nickel ternary rather than the LFP in Tesla’s cars. And Leaderdrive, the Suzhou maker of the harmonic reducer in the joint, reported as Tesla’s sole source for the part.

The battery and the joint. One Korean, one Chinese, neither substitutable on the timescale both are promising.

NVIDIA is not the third name, though most maps put it there. Tesla buys its GPUs by the tens of thousands, for the datacenters that train the model, not for the robot: Optimus runs Tesla’s own AI5 inference silicon. Training infrastructure is not a bill of materials.

What the map shows. Figure is the more vertically integrated of the two, and it is the one whose claim survives checking: it fabricates its own structures and builds its own actuators at BotQ. Tesla designs the AI5 and has Samsung build it. But neither in-house claim reaches the bottom. Figure’s actuator turns a Chinese reducer, Tesla’s silicon is made in Korea and Taiwan, and below that the two converge twice, on the Korean cell and the Chinese joint.

The battery number is the one to look at. US customs records show LG Energy Solution accounting for 40% of Figure AI's inbound shipments, across 8,187 shipment records, and 39.29% of Boston Dynamics' inbound shipments Confirmed · US customs bills of lading. Two different humanoid makers, independently, land within a percentage point of each other on the same cell supplier.

That is not a coincidence of sourcing preference. It is what a thin qualified-vendor list looks like from the outside. Automotive-grade cell chemistry that survives a humanoid's duty cycle, at volumes a pre-revenue robotics program can actually order, comes from a very short list, and the whole field is queueing at the same window.

Where they genuinely diverge is the silicon, and it is not where the coverage puts it. Optimus runs Tesla's own AI5 inference part. Figure runs merchant compute: NVIDIA RTX GPU modules on the robot Confirmed · 0.80, alongside a Qualcomm design win disclosed on Qualcomm's own earnings call Reported · 0.80. Custom silicon against merchant silicon is a real architectural fork, and it is the one place these two programs are doing genuinely different things.

It is also narrower than it looks. Tesla designs AI5 and does not build it: Samsung holds a $16.5 billion contract to fabricate it, with TSMC dual-sourced Reported · 0.80. In-house silicon that is fabricated in Korea, Texas and Taiwan is an ownership claim about the design, not about the supply chain, and only the second one is exposed to an export rule.

They converge a second time at the joint. Both programs buy the same Chinese harmonic reducer. Suzhou Green Harmonic, listed as Leaderdrive, has passed Tesla's supplier verification and is reported as its sole source for the part Reported · 0.80; it appears on Figure's side as well Reported · 0.75. That is the single supplier a disruption reaches on both sides at once, and it is the finding Upstream issue 1 reached from the other direction. Around it, Optimus's actuator assembly resolves to Sanhua and Tuopu in China and Nidec in Japan Reported · 0.75, none of them Tesla.

The cells run wider than the two programs in this comparison. LG Energy Solution has supply agreements with all three US humanoid developers, Tesla, Boston Dynamics and Figure Reported · 0.80, and is in discussions with Chinese makers including Unitree. Optimus is specified for high-nickel ternary rather than the LFP chemistry in Tesla's cars, because a humanoid's space and weight budget does not tolerate the tradeoff a car will absorb. That is the tell that this is a robot decision and not an automotive one carried over.

Which makes the customs numbers above a floor rather than a curiosity. Two makers landing within a percentage point of each other is what a category-wide qualified-vendor list looks like when you can only see two of its members.

Figure's in-house claim is the one that survives audit. On its own disclosure, Figure "chose to vertically integrate across many critical module builds including actuators, batteries, sensors, structures, and electronics, all of which were designed completely in-house" Confirmed · company disclosure, 0.90. That is two distinct things, and both check out. It fabricates: Figure 02 was machined on CNC, while Figure 03 "relies heavily on tooled processes such as die-casting, injection molding, and stamping", which is what a company does when it has decided to own the part rather than order it. And it assembles: over 9,000 actuators across more than ten SKUs, at better than 80% end-of-line first-pass yield, with the battery line at 99.3%.

Read precisely, though, because the boundary is where the money is. This is part fabrication and final assembly, not raw manufacture. Figure still qualifies and buys raw materials, silicon, sensors and fasteners from outside. The cells inside those battery packs are LG Energy Solution's and the reducer inside those actuators is Leaderdrive's. Figure builds the actuator; it does not make everything in the actuator. Vertical integration of this kind buys control over cost, tooling and iteration speed. It does not buy independence from an export rule.

What we're watching upstream

Any export restriction touching Chinese harmonic reducers. This is a two-program event, not a Tesla event: Leaderdrive sits on both bills of materials and is reported as Tesla's sole source Reported · 0.80.
Any constraint on Korean high-nickel cell supply. Bigger still, because it reaches Figure, Boston Dynamics and Optimus at once, which is most of the Western humanoid field.
AI5 allocation between Samsung's Taylor fab and TSMC. A Tesla and Samsung question, and nobody else's.
Whether Figure's in-house line changes what Figure buys. Vertical integration that still qualifies Leaderdrive reducers and LG cells has moved the boundary, not removed it. Watch the customs record, not the announcement.
Any disclosure that puts a second qualified cell vendor on a humanoid program. Two makers landing within a percentage point of each other is the tell that the vendor list is short; a third name would be the tell that it is widening.

The demos will keep diverging. The parts list is doing the opposite.

Sources

LG Energy Solution share of Figure and Boston Dynamics inbound shipments: US customs bills of lading, via ImportYeti
LGES battery supply deals with top humanoid developers: KED Global, Jul 2026
LGES humanoid push and Optimus supply: DIGITIMES, Jul 2026
Figure onboard NVIDIA compute: NVIDIA blog
Figure 03 hardware: Figure, Oct 2025
Qualcomm design win at Figure: Qualcomm FY2026 Q2 earnings call
Tesla / Samsung $16.5B chip contract: CNBC, Jul 2025
AI5 at Samsung's Taylor fab, TSMC dual-sourced: UPI, Jul 2026
Leaderdrive (Suzhou Green Harmonic) into Tesla: Sina Finance, Feb 2025
Leaderdrive across humanoid programs, Figure included: Forbes, Apr 2026
Optimus actuator assembly (Sanhua, Tuopu, Nidec): Optimus supplier teardown
Tuopu rotary actuators: Yicai Global, Mar 2025
Sanhua ~$685M order: 36Kr, Oct 2025
Figure in-house module builds, BotQ: Figure, Mar 2025
Figure 03 tooled processes and line yields: Figure, Apr 2026
Figure 03 battery pack development: Figure