Skild AI
Foundation model
Pittsburgh lab building the Skild Brain, a cross-embodiment robotics foundation model that aims to control any robot for any task.
Skild AI builds the Skild Brain, a general-purpose robotics foundation model designed to control any robot body - humanoids, quadrupeds, arms - for a wide range of tasks without prior knowledge of its embodiment. Founded in 2023 by former Carnegie Mellon professors Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta, Skild trains its model on large-scale robot data to generalize across hardware and environments, with the ambition of becoming a horizontal 'brain' layer that robot makers and operators license. It is backed by SoftBank, NVIDIA, Samsung, LG, Bezos Expeditions, Lightspeed and Coatue, and reported one of the largest robotics-AI raises on record. (Company-reported figures.)
Research mapping
Physical AI / Sim-to-Real, Digital Twins & Validation (L9) / Foundation model
Evidence boundary
Original analysis and independent corroboration remain under development. Commercial scale and durable technical advantage remain under review.
What makes it defensible
A single cross-embodiment foundation model trained on broad robot data, from a founding team with deep robot-learning and sim-to-real research - a scale/data moat in general-purpose robot control.
Position in the stack: Robotics foundation-model layer supplying a universal robot 'brain' to hardware makers and operators.
Who buys it
Named customers: LG CNS, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (partnerships)
Founding team
Deepak Pathak — Co-founder & CEO — Former Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute professor; PhD in AI, UC Berkeley; ex-Facebook AI Research.
Abhinav Gupta — Co-founder & President — Former Carnegie Mellon professor (16+ years); PhD in Computer Science, University of Maryland; ex-Meta, Google and AI2 researcher.
SourceFinancing detail
- Last round
- Series C
Investors: SoftBank Group, NVentures (NVIDIA), Macquarie Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Lightspeed, Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Samsung, LG, Schneider Electric, Salesforce Ventures, Felicis
Mapped funds and investors
Direct relationships supported by published evidence.
Reported holdings as-of
No sourced relationships mapped yet.
Disclosed investment history
Showing up to four relationships in each group. ETF weights describe the fund’s portfolio, not ownership of this company. Private investment history does not establish current ownership.
Evidence & media
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Skild AI Raises $1.4B, Now Valued Over $14B
What this source supports: $1.4B Series C led by SoftBank at >$14B valuation; investors incl NVentures (NVIDIA), Macquarie, Bezos Expeditions, Lightspeed, Coatue, Sequoia
What it does not establish: Press release; revenue and customer volumes not disclosed
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Skild AI unveils S1 flagship robot foundation model
What this source supports: S1 robot foundation model learns complex long-horizon tasks from a single video via in-context learning; ~$1.7B raised to date
What it does not establish: Company-claimed capabilities; no independent benchmark
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Skild AI accelerates development of human-like robot brain with AI solutions from HPE
What this source supports: HPE/STN private AI-as-a-service (with NVIDIA) powers Skild AI model training and inference
What it does not establish: Partner press release; no financial terms or compute scale disclosed
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Pittsburgh airport staff gets help in form of AI-powered robots (Skild AI quadrupeds)
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Skild AI Acquires Zebra Technologies' Robotics Automation Business (Zebra newsroom)
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Skild AI co-founder says talks are ongoing with LG CNS (Market Kurly logistics/factory pilot), Samsung and HD Hyundai; LG Innotek reviewing camera/sensor supply
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Timeline
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partnership
Skild AI co-founder says talks are ongoing with LG CNS (Market Kurly logistics/factory pilot), Samsung and HD Hyundai; LG Innotek reviewing camera/sensor supply
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Facility
Skild AI opens a Bengaluru office
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partnership
Skild AI announces partnerships with ABB Robotics and Universal Robots, together with NVIDIA, to bring the Skild Brain to industrial robot fleets
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Governance
Skild AI acquires Zebra Technologies' Robotics Automation business (cash plus a Zebra equity stake in Skild), adding the Symmetry Fulfillment orchestration platform
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Customer
Pittsburgh International Airport deploys four Skild AI-powered quadrupeds in the terminal (xBridge trial) to monitor air quality and assist staff
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Financing
Series C — $1,830,000,000 total disclosed
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