Skild AI, a company focused on developing intelligence grounded in the physical world, has officially launched from stealth mode. Founded in 2023, Skild AI has quickly assembled a top-tier team and made significant strides towards creating a scalable AI foundation model for robotics. The company has announced a successful $300 million Series A funding round, bringing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), with additional participation from Felicis Ventures, Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, Amazon, SV Angel, and Carnegie Mellon University.
The capital from this round will be used to further scale Skild AI's model and expand its team.
Breaking the Data Barrier in Robotics
Skild AI's foundation model is trained on an extensive scale of data, representing a breakthrough in overcoming the robotics data barrier. Unlike vertically designed robots intended for specific applications or isolated environments, Skild AI's model serves as a general-purpose brain. It has demonstrated significant generalization and emergent capabilities across various robots, scenarios, and tasks, including manipulation, locomotion, and navigation.
Real-World Applications
The model has enabled resilient quadrupeds to master adverse physical conditions and vision-based humanoids to perform complex household and industrial tasks. This innovation aims to facilitate the use of cost-effective robots across a wide range of industries and applications. The current labor shortage in the United States, with over 1.7 million more jobs available than unemployed workers, highlights the potential impact of Skild AI's technology. Industries such as healthcare, construction, warehousing, and manufacturing are experiencing significant shortages, with projections indicating 2.1 million unfulfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030. Many of these positions involve hazardous conditions, which robots equipped with Skild AI's model could safely undertake, thus offering substantial automation opportunities in real-world environments.
Investor Insights
Raviraj Jain, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, stated, "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, noted, "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."
Future Plans
Skild AI's long-term goal is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) grounded in the physical world, challenging the notion that AGI can only arise from digital knowledge. The team includes top robotics and AI experts from Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon, Google, and leading academic institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UIUC. Skild AI is currently hiring for various roles across AI, robotics, engineering, operations, and security. Interested individuals are encouraged to apply.
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