Skild AI, a pioneering AI robotics company, announced today that it has closed a significant $300 million Series A funding round. Leading the round were Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos through Bezos Expeditions. The round also saw participation from prominent investors including Felicis Ventures, Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, Amazon, SV Angel, and Carnegie Mellon University, bringing the company’s valuation to an impressive $1.5 billion.
Deepak Pathak, CEO and Co-Founder of Skild AI, highlighted the breakthrough nature of their work, stating, “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.” This funding will accelerate Skild AI’s mission to create a scalable foundation model for robotics that surpasses existing capabilities in the industry.
Skild AI is at the forefront of developing intelligent systems deeply integrated with the physical world. The company’s approach is breaking the data barrier in robotics, training its models on 1,000 times more data points than competing models. Unlike vertically designed robots created for specific applications, Skild AI’s model acts as a shared, general-purpose brain, applicable to a variety of robots, scenarios, and tasks. These include manipulation, locomotion, and navigation, enabling robots to operate in diverse environments and perform complex tasks.
From resilient quadrupeds that can navigate challenging physical conditions to vision-based humanoids capable of dexterous manipulation for intricate household and industrial tasks, Skild AI’s model is set to enable the deployment of low-cost robots across numerous industries. This approach has the potential to significantly reduce the reliance on human labor in sectors facing severe shortages. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports a substantial labor shortage, with over 1.7 million more jobs available than there are unemployed workers. This issue is particularly acute in industries like healthcare, construction, warehousing, and manufacturing, where the National Association of Manufacturers projects 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030.
Skild AI’s innovative model aims to address these gaps by making robots agile, dexterous, and safe for interaction with humans, enabling them to perform tasks in hazardous environments such as oil rigs and machine rooms. This capability allows robots to adapt to and undertake novel tasks alongside humans, mitigating risks and enhancing productivity in various sectors. Pathak concluded, “We believe Skild AI represents a step change in how robotics will be scaled and has the potential to change the entire physical economy.”
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