Skild AI: Building a ‘General Purpose Brain’ for Robots

Skild AI, a burgeoning player in robotics, has secured $300 million in funding to advance its plug-and-play robotic intelligence. The company aims to develop a versatile ‘general purpose brain’ that can be seamlessly integrated into various types of robots.

Funding and Ambitions

Founded by former Carnegie Mellon professors Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak in May 2023, Skild AI has raised $300 million in a Series A funding round, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. Investors include Lightspeed Ventures, Softbank, Coatue, and Jeff Bezos, among others.

Technology and Applications

Skild AI’s innovation promises to equip robots with capabilities such as climbing, object recognition, and adaptive learning of new tasks—a concept demonstrated through emergent capabilities not explicitly taught to the robots.

Strategic Vision

The company envisions a future where its foundational model enables widespread adoption across industries, akin to the impact of digital intelligence advances. Despite competition from giants like OpenAI and others, Skild AI distinguishes itself with a data-driven approach and ambitions for achieving artificial general intelligence in robotics.

Future Outlook

With ambitions to revolutionize robotics with its scalable and adaptable AI, Skild AI aims to usher in a new era of robotic capabilities that could redefine human-robot interactions and operational efficiencies across various sectors.

This development marks a significant step towards realizing a ‘GPT-3 moment’ in robotics, potentially reshaping industry standards and applications.