Figure AI's decision to accept the White House invitation was defensible on pure visibility grounds: there is no larger stage in U.S. public life, and Melania Trump's summit drew first spouses from more than 40 countries [9]. Figure 03 thanked the First Lady on camera, it moved alongside her in the East Room, and it was framed as an educational technology showcase [4][19]. In a different political moment, this would have been the kind of institutional credibility that a hardware startup spends years trying to acquire.