Humanoid Robotics Technology
Skild AI was founded in 2023 with the goal of building intelligence grounded in the physical world. In a short period, the company has assembled a stellar team and achieved significant breakthroughs towards creating a scalable AI foundation model for robotics.
Skild AI is now officially out of stealth mode, announcing a successful $300 million Series A funding round that values the company at $1.5 billion. 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.
Skild AI is proud to have the backing and support of these esteemed investors. The Series A capital will be used to continue scaling the AI model and investing in team growth.
Breaking the data barrier in robotics The foundation model is trained on an unparalleled scale of data, representing a breakthrough in overcoming the robotics data barrier. Unlike robots designed for specific applications or isolated environments, Skild AI’s model serves as a general-purpose brain, demonstrating remarkable generalization and emergent capabilities across diverse robots, scenarios, and tasks, including manipulation, locomotion, and navigation.
Real-world applications From resilient quadrupeds mastering adverse conditions to vision-based humanoids performing complex tasks, Skild AI’s model enables low-cost robots to be used across various industries. This is crucial given the current and projected labor shortage in America, with more than 1.7 million jobs available than unemployed workers. Sectors such as healthcare, construction, warehousing, and manufacturing are among the most impacted, with an estimated 2.1 million unfulfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030. Skild AI’s model allows robots to be agile, dexterous, and safe, providing significant potential for automation in real-world environments.
Investor perspectives on Skild AI “Skild AI has achieved massive breakthroughs in a short period, redefining our notions of machine capabilities. Deepak and Abhinav have been catalysts in robotics advancements, leveraging foundation models into the real world, putting the industry on the path of general-purpose robotics.” – Raviraj Jain, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners
“Skild AI’s scalable approach to foundational models for robot manipulation and locomotion is revolutionary. Coatue is thrilled to back their effort to bring dynamic, adaptable robots to hazardous jobs and sectors with significant labor shortages.” – Sri Viswanath, General Partner at Coatue and former CTO of Atlassian
“Felicis has invested in robotics for over 15 years, and Skild is the most visionary company we’ve seen. Their model will execute any task, in any environment, on any hardware, poised to reshape the global workforce.” – Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis Ventures
“A GPT-3 moment is coming to robotics, bringing advancements from digital to physical worlds. Since partnering with Skild AI at the seed round, I believe they are the team to pursue one of the most ambitious visions of our era.” – Stephanie Zhan, Partner, Sequoia Capital
What’s next Skild AI’s long-term goal is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) rooted in the physical world, challenging the notion that AGI arises solely from digital knowledge. The team includes top robotics and AI experts from Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon, Google, and leading universities. Skild AI is hiring across AI, robotics, engineering, operations, and security. Interested candidates are encouraged to apply.
SOURCE: Skild AI
