- Series A funding values Skild AI at $1.5B
- Round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank
Group and Bezos Expeditions
- Company founded by pioneers in the field of self-supervised and
adaptive robotics
Skild AI, an AI robotics company building a scalable foundation
model for robotics, today announced it has closed a $300M Series A
funding round. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners,
Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions),
with participation from Felicis Ventures, Sequoia, Menlo Ventures,
General Catalyst, CRV, Amazon, SV Angel, and Carnegie Mellon
University. The funding brings the company to a valuation of
$1.5B.
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Skild AI is building a scalable
foundation model for robotics that serves as a shared,
general-purpose brain across diverse robot embodiments and a
variety of real-world applications. (Photo: Business Wire)
Skild AI is building intelligence that is grounded in the
physical world. The company is breaking the data barrier in
robotics, training its model on at least 1,000X more data points
than competing models. As opposed to vertically designed robots
that are built for specific applications, Skild’s model serves as a
shared, general-purpose brain for a diverse embodiment of robots,
scenarios and tasks, including manipulation, locomotion and
navigation. From resilient quadrupeds mastering adverse physical
conditions, to vision-based humanoids performing dexterous
manipulation of objects for complex household and industrial tasks,
the company’s model will enable the use of low-cost robots across a
broad range of industries and applications.
“The large-scale model we are building demonstrates unparalleled
generalization and emergent capabilities across robots and tasks,
providing significant potential for automation within real-world
environments,” said Deepak Pathak, CEO and Co-Founder of Skild AI.
“We believe Skild AI represents a step change in how robotics will
be scaled, and has the potential to change the entire physical
economy.”
In contrast to existing robotic applications where robots are
deployed in isolated or constrained environments, Skild’s
general-purpose AI model makes any kind of robot agile, dexterous,
and safe to interact with people. There is a massive labor shortage
in America today, with more than 1.7 million jobs available than
there are unemployed workers (Source: U.S. Chamber of Commerce).
Industries such as healthcare, construction, warehousing and
manufacturing are among the most impacted; experts project there
will be 2.1 million unfulfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030 (Source:
National Association of Manufacturers). Additionally, many of these
jobs can be dangerous for humans, such as oil rigs and machine
rooms. Skild’s model enables robots to adapt and perform novel
tasks alongside humans, or in dangerous settings, instead of
humans.
“With general purpose robots that can safely perform any
automated task, in any environment, and with any type of
embodiment, we can expand the capabilities of robots, democratize
their cost, and support the severely understaffed labor market,”
said Abhinav Gupta, President and Co-Founder of Skild AI.
“Skild AI has achieved massive breakthroughs in a short period,
and we believe they’re a one-of-a-kind company that could redefine
our notions of what machines are capable of,” said Raviraj Jain,
Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners. “Deepak and Abhinav have been
catalysts of advancements in robotics, and their innovation around
leveraging the core principles of foundation models into the real
world puts the industry on the path of general purpose
robotics.”
“A GPT-3 moment is coming to the world of robotics,” said
Stephanie Zhan, Partner, Sequoia Capital. “It will spark a
monumental shift that brings advancements similar to what we’ve
seen in the world of digital intelligence, to the physical world.
Since partnering with Skild AI at the seed round, I have deep
conviction that they are the team to pursue one of the most
ambitious visions of our era.”
Gupta and Pathak have been Carnegie Mellon University professors
with a combined 25 years of experience between them in robotics and
AI, and they have been credited for numerous industry breakthroughs
such as self-supervised robotics, curiosity-driven agents, and
adaptive robot learning. Together, they have a 150+ h-index, over
90k citations, and have received multiple awards for their work.
The Skild AI team includes robotics and AI experts from Meta,
Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon, Google, and the top schools including
Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.
“Skild AI has a truly scalable approach to building foundational
models for robot manipulation and locomotion. Coatue is thrilled to
back their effort to revolutionize robotics, shifting from
pre-programmed to dynamic, adaptable robots,” said Sri Viswanath,
General Partner at Coatue and former CTO of Atlassian. “With
Skild’s technology, there is potential to disrupt today’s physical
economy, bringing robots to hazardous jobs such as in machine
rooms, containments, etc., and to sectors suffering huge labor
shortages such as in security and hospitals.”
The capital will be used to continue scaling the company’s model
and training datasets for future commercial deployment of its
technology, in addition to hiring for roles across AI, robotics,
engineering, operations, and security.
Skild AI’s long-term goal is to develop artificial general
intelligence (AGI) rooted in the physical world, challenging the
popular notion that AGI can solely arise from digital
knowledge.
About Skild AI
Founded in 2023 by two pioneers in the field of self-supervised
and adaptive robotics, Skild AI is building a scalable foundation
model for robotics that serves as a shared, general-purpose brain
across diverse robot embodiments and a variety of real-world
applications. The company has offices in Pittsburgh and the San
Francisco Bay Area. For more information, visit
https://www.skild.ai/
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240709306400/en/
Esther Hallmeyer press@skild.ai