The $1.5 Billion AI Company Building A 'General Purpose' Brain For Robots

Skild AI, a Pittsburgh-based startup founded by former Carnegie Mellon professors Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak, has developed a "general purpose brain" designed to provide foundational intelligence for various robotic forms, from humanoids to quadrupeds. Unlike traditional specialized systems, this model enables emergent capabilities such as climbing stairs and recovering dropped objects in unfamiliar environments. The company recently secured $300 million in Series A funding at a $1.5 billion valuation from investors including Jeff Bezos and SoftBank. Skild AI differentiates itself by training on a database 1,000 times larger than its competitors, utilizing a mix of human teleoperation, trial-and-error "artificial curiosity," and video data. This breakthrough allows robots to convert written knowledge from large language models into physical actions, positioning the company as a significant challenger to rivals like OpenAI and Figure AI in the race to build a "ChatGPT for robots."