AI robotics startup raises US$300 million, including from Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday, March 12, 2023, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

PITTSBURGH, Penn. -

A Pittsburgh-based robotics company secured millions in a recent round of venture capital funding, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even chipping into the pot.

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Skild AI announced on Tuesday it had closed a US$300 million Series A funding round. The artificial intelligence startup, which also has headquarters in San Francisco, is focused on building a robotics model it says will be general purpose enough to work with many kinds of robots. This base model would work as a sort of artificial “brain” that could be adapted to different real-world needs.

“From resilient quadrupeds mastering adverse physical conditions, to vision-based humanoids performing dexterous manipulation of objects for complex household and industrial tasks, the company’s model will enable the use of low-cost robots across a broad range of industries and applications,” Skild AI said in a news release.

Series A funding rounds are geared toward venture capitalists looking for an established company with a chance for long-term financial success. To that point, SkildAI said in the release that this fresh capital would be “used to continue scaling the company’s model and training datasets for future commercial deployment of its technology.” This funding round brought Skild AI’s valuation up to US$1.5 billion.

“We believe Skild AI represents a step change in how robotics will be scaled and has the potential to change the entire physical economy,” company CEO and co-founder Deepak Pathak said.

Among the investors were Bezos, through his firm Bezos Expeditions, and Softbank Group. Carnegie Mellon University, where Pathak and fellow co-founder Abhinav Gupta teach, also participated in this round.

The startup employs a team from Meta, Nvidia, Google and other leading developers in artificial intelligence. Their local headquarters are in East Liberty, the growing nexus of Pittsburgh's AI scene.