Skild AI, a startup focused on building software for robotic learning, has secured $1.4B in its latest Series C funding round, propelling its valuation to $14B, according to Bloomberg.
The round was led by SoftBank Group (SFTBF)(SFTBY) and included participation from Nvidia (NVDA), Bezos Expeditions, which is Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos’ venture capital firm, and Macquarie Group (MCQEF), the report said. Other investors were Lightspeed Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Samsung (SSNLF) and Salesforce (CRM).
Skild AI is attempting to build a software model that allows a robot to complete a wide range of tasks, or general-purpose robotics, without the need for human operators to guide the robot. The company is training the software through visual learning.
“Humans don’t learn to make tea by being told the exact Newton-meters of force to apply to a kettle,” the company said. “We learn through observational learning. We possess a foundation of kinematics and dynamics that allows us to watch a visual demonstration, internalize the intent, and map those actions onto our own bodies. This data—human video—is already abundant. From first-person ‘egocentric’ headcam footage to the millions of instructional videos on YouTube, the ‘internet-scale’ dataset for robotics already exists. It just isn’t ‘robot-native.'”
The Pittsburgh-based company was founded in 2023.