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.

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.

• 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.)

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.

• Brookfield partners with Figure AI to develop humanoid robots

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.

• Figure AI launches BotQ, the factory where 12,000 robots will be built per year

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.

• In Flatt’s view, automation is remaking manufacturing

What it means for humans