SoftBank Group and Nvidia are in talks to lead an investment of over $1 billion at a $14 billion valuation in Skild AI, a software company building a foundational robotics model, Reuters reported.
The nearly three-year-old startup was last valued at $4.7 billion in May when it raised $500 million in a round led by SoftBank along with the participation of LG Technology Ventures, Samsung, Nvidia, and others, according to PitchBook data. Skild didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. SoftBank and Nvidia declined to comment.
Unlike other heavily funded startups, Skild AI is not building proprietary hardware. Instead, it’s developing a robot-agnostic foundation model that can be customized for various types of robots and use cases.
The company unveiled its general-purpose robot model Skild Brain in July with videos showing robots picking up dishes and climbing up and down the stairs. The company has secured strategic partnerships with LG CNS and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to develop its ecosystem.
Investor interest in AI robotics has been steadily growing. Physical Intelligence, another company developing “brains” for a broad range of robots, has reportedly recently raised $600 million at a $5.6 billion valuation led by CapitalG. One investor who evaluated but declined to fund Physical Intelligence told TechCrunch that its model is still in the early stages of development.
In September, Figure, a company developing a humanoid robot, raised more than $1 billion at a massive $39 billion valuation. Meanwhile, 1X, another humanoid robot developer, was in talks to secure as much as $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation, The Information reported several months ago.
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