Skild AI Raises USD 300 Mn in Series A Led by Lightspeed and Others The funds will scale the company's model and training datasets for future commercial deployment of its technology, and expand hiring across AI, robotics, engineering, operations, and security.
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AI robotics startup Skild AI has secured USD 300 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions).
Other investors include Felicis Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, Amazon, SV Angel, and Carnegie Mellon University.
The funds will scale the company's model and training datasets for future commercial deployment of its technology, and expand hiring across AI, robotics, engineering, operations, and security.
Founded in 2023 by former Carnegie Mellon professors Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak, Skild AI develops AI-powered brains for robots. The Pittsburgh-based startup is now valued at USD 1.5 billion.
"The large-scale model we are building demonstrates unparalleled generalisation 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."
The model, trained on 1,000 times more data points than competitors, aims to enable low-cost robots to operate in various industries.
"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.
Jain added that the company's innovation around leveraging the core principles of foundation models into the real world puts the industry on the path of general-purpose robotics.
The Skild AI team comprises experts who have previously worked at Meta, Tesla, NVIDIA, Amazon, Google, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.
"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," noted Stephanie Zhan, Partner at Sequoia Capital. "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."
