Skild AI, a company that develops foundation models for robots, has reportedly more than tripled its valuation in just seven months. According to reports, the startup has raised a $1.4 billion Series C funding round led by SoftBank, valuing the company at over $14 billion. Other investors in the round included Nvidia, Macquarie Group, and 1789 Capital.
This marks a significant jump from the company’s previous funding round in the summer, which valued Skild AI at $4.5 billion. While the exact amount of that earlier round was not disclosed, it was rumored to be approximately $500 million. Skild AI CEO Deepak Pathak stated that the company has now raised more than $2 billion in total funding to date.
Founded in 2023, Skild AI builds general-purpose robotic software and foundation models. These models are designed to be retrofitted to a wide variety of robots and tasks without requiring extensive additional training. A key hope for this technology is that the models can learn by observing humans perform tasks.
This development aligns with a major recent push into adaptive robotic software, fueled in part by growing interest in humanoid robots. One of the largest obstacles to wider robot adoption, for both personal and industrial uses, is the substantial training required for robots to learn each new task individually. Software that enables robots to learn and adapt on the fly could pave the way for broader robotic integration.
Other companies are also working in this space. Field AI is another startup focused on building easily-adapted robotic software. Additionally, 1X, the maker of the humanoid robot Neo, recently released a world model aimed at helping robots learn from their observations, pursuing a similar goal of versatile robotic intelligence.