Parkway Tops Emerging VC List

Brett Adcock, founder of Figure, stated that Parkway Venture Capital ranks first in the 2026 emerging VC firms list and is the earliest external VC partner to invest in Figure.

The list was published by Ilya Strebulaev, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, with Parkway scoring 3,221 points to take the top spot; Factorial Funds ranked second with 2,958 points, and Future Ventures third with 2,875 points. Parkway is ranked 19th overall among all VC firms, ahead of several older funds.

Parkway's investment in Figure began with an approximately $70 million Series A round in 2023 and continued to lead subsequent financing rounds. Public reports indicate that Parkway participated in all major financing rounds from Figure's early humanoid robot development to large-scale training data and production infrastructure phases, forming a highly concentrated long-term holding relationship.

Figure completed over $1 billion in Series C financing in September 2025, with a post-investment valuation of approximately $39 billion; participants included Parkway, Brookfield Asset Management, Nvidia, Intel Capital, Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, and ARK Investment Management. The valuation is based on private financing metrics and does not represent immediate realizable prices in the public market.

Recently, Figure launched the Index platform to collect human work videos in home and business environments for training robots, compensating individuals for their contributions; the company claims the platform has over 44,000 weekly active users, collecting about 30 minutes of video per second, equivalent to approximately 4.9 years of human activity records daily. Brett Adcock stated that Figure plans to invest $1 billion in such training data.

Market mechanisms indicate that Parkway's ranking rise comes from its early holdings and valuation re-evaluation in high-growth robotic assets like Figure; fund buyers will focus on whether it can continue to secure early project shares in AI, robotics, and automation. The subsequent value of Figure will depend on whether humanoid robots can convert training data, model capabilities, hardware production, and customer deployment into actual revenue; early funds benefit from valuation increases, while later investors bear the risks of high valuations, insufficient liquidity, and commercialization realization.

Source: Public Information