There has been significant investor interest in the intersection of AI and robotics in recent times. Skild AI faces competition in the field, some from their own investor—Bezos has increased his funding for AI-based robotics startups
By Nileena Sunil
SoftBank is negotiating a $500 million investment in Skild AI, a software company building a financial model at a $4 billion valuation.
Skild AI is a startup that builds general purpose robotic intelligence. By using cutting-edge machine learning algorithms, the company aims to make robust robots which can adapt across hardware and tasks so that they can be used in different environments from construction sites to factories and homes.
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Founded in 2023, the startup raised its previous funding round of $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in July 2024 from investors including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Coatue Management.
The company claims that the “Skild Brain” is the first scalable robotics foundation model and that the brain can adapt across hardware and tasks. The founders, Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta, are IIT-Kanpur graduates, and professors at Carnegie Mellon University.
Pathak, who earned a PhD in AI from University of California, Berkley, was named 35 Innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review. Gupta, who holds a doctorate in computer science from University of Maryland, previously worked alongside Pathak as researchers in Meta-owned Facebook before starting their own venture.
The company’s AI model can be applied to various types of robots, Pathak and Gupta told TechCrunch in 2024. They said the generalized model can be modified for a specific domain and use case.
There has been significant investor interest in the intersection of AI and robotics in recent times. Skild AI faces competition in the field, some from their own investor—Bezos has increased his funding for AI-based robotics startups.
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Physical Intelligence, a startup that raised $400 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation in November 2024, is another startup that claims to be developing “brains” for a broad range of robots. Bezos, Lux Capital, and Thrive Capital are among investors that led that round.
In February 2024, Figure AI, a startup building an AI-powered humanoid robot, raised $675 million at a $2.6 billion valuation with investments from Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, and Bezos Expeditions.