Robots, whether they are bipedal humanoids handling basic factory tasks or four-legged military “robot dogs” intended for urban combat, need brains. Historically, these have been highly specialized and purpose-built. But a Pittsburgh-brd robotics startup claims it’s created a single off-the-shelf intelligence that can be plugged into different robots to enable basic functions. Founded in May 2023 by Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak, two former Carnegie Mellon University professors, Skild AI has created a foundational model for what it describes as a “general purpose brain” that can be slotted into a variety of robots, enabling them to do things like climbing steep slopes, walking over objects obstructing its path and identifying and picking up items. The company announced Tuesday it has raised $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Ventures, Softbank, Coatue and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with participation from CRV, Felicis Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Amazon and General Catalyst, among others. Raviraj Jain, the Lightspeed partner who also led the company’s seed round in July 2023 told Forbes he was wildly impressed with Skild AI’s models when he first saw them being pressure tested last April. Robots using them were able to perform tasks in environments that they’d never seen before and hadn’t been designed for demos. “The robots at that time were able to climb stairs, and I think it’s really crazy how well they were able to do it because it’s a very complex stability problem,” he said.
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