Skild AI Hits $14B Valuation in Robotics Software Boom
▼ Summary
– Skild AI, a startup building foundation models for robots, has raised a $1.4 billion Series C round, valuing it at over $14 billion.
– This new valuation is more than triple its $4.5 billion valuation from a funding round just seven months prior in the summer.
– The funding round was led by SoftBank, with additional investment from Nvidia, Macquarie Group, and 1789 Capital.
– The company, founded in 2023, creates general-purpose robotic software that can be adapted to various robots and tasks with minimal extra training.
– This technology aims to overcome a major hurdle in robotics by reducing the extensive training needed for robots to learn new tasks, aligning with a broader industry push.
The robotics software sector is witnessing a staggering surge in valuation, with Skild AI securing a monumental $1.4 billion Series C funding round. This investment, spearheaded by SoftBank and supported by Nvidia and other prominent backers, catapults the company’s valuation to over $14 billion. This figure represents a dramatic increase from the $4.5 billion valuation the startup held just seven months prior. According to CEO Deepak Pathak, the company has now amassed more than $2 billion in total funding to date, marking a rapid and significant escalation in its financial backing and market confidence.
Founded in 2023, Skild AI specializes in developing general-purpose robotic software and foundation models. The core innovation lies in creating adaptable intelligence that can be integrated into a wide array of existing robots and assigned various tasks. Crucially, this system requires minimal additional training for each new application. A key ambition for the technology is enabling robots to learn simply by observing humans perform actions, a capability that could fundamentally reshape automation.
This funding milestone underscores a broader, intense focus within the tech industry on creating more flexible and intelligent robotic systems. The vision is to move beyond robots that are painstakingly programmed for single, specific functions. Instead, companies are racing to develop software that allows machines to learn and adapt dynamically to new challenges. This shift is seen as essential for overcoming one of the most significant barriers to widespread robot adoption: the extensive time and resources needed to train machines for every individual task they might encounter. Eliminating this training bottleneck is considered a critical step toward deploying robots more broadly in both industrial settings and personal use cases.
The momentum is not isolated to Skild AI. The entire field is buzzing with activity, particularly alongside growing excitement around humanoid robots. Other players are pursuing similar objectives. For instance, Field AI is another startup focused on creating easily-adapted robotic software. Meanwhile, 1X, the company behind the humanoid robot Neo, recently unveiled its own “world model” aimed at achieving comparable goals of general-purpose robotic intelligence. The substantial investment flowing into Skild AI signals strong investor belief that foundational AI models will be the driving force behind the next generation of versatile, useful robots.
(Source: TechCrunch)
