Skild AI has closed a $300m funding round to continue its development of a shared, general purpose “brain” for AI robotics
The company’s AI robotics model is trained on at least 1,000 times more data points than competing models. As opposed to vertically designed models for specific applications, Skild’s is intended as a scalable, large-scale foundation for diverse robots, scenarios and tasks, including manipulation, locomotion and navigation.
The Series A funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions). Participants include Felicis Ventures, Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, Amazon, SV Angel and Carnegie Mellon University. The funding brings the company to a valuation of $1.5bn.
Skild co-founders Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta have been professors at Carnegie Mellon University with a combined 25 years of experience between them in AI and robotics. They have been credited with numerous industry breakthroughs, including self-supervised robotics, curiosity-driven agents and adaptive robot learning.
“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,” Pathak said.
“We believe Skild AI represents a step-change in how robotics will be scaled and has the potential to change the entire physical economy.”
AI robotics tackling US labor shortages?
There is a massive labor shortage in America today, with more than 1.7m jobs available than there are unemployed workers, according to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Industries such as healthcare, construction, warehousing and manufacturing are among the most impacted; experts project there will be 2.1m unfulfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
“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.
Redefining notions of machine capabilities
Raviraj Jain, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said: “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.
“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.”
Stephanie Zhan, partner at Sequoia Capital, said: “A GPT-3 moment is coming to the world of robotics. 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.”
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.
