Skills AI, a robotics startup, has surpassed $14 billion in valuation following a $1.4 billion SoftBank-led funding round
Skilled AI advances its progress toward general-purpose robotic intelligence, raises $1.4 billion, and triples its valuation in a matter of months.
The quickly expanding robotics software developer Skild AI Inc. raises about $1.4 billion in a Series C fundraising round, valuing the business at over $14 billion. Investor trust in robotics powered by artificial intelligence is growing, as evidenced by the valuation’s more than threefold growth from just seven months ago.
According to co-founder and CEO Deepak Pathak, SoftBank Group Corp. is leading the round, with participation from Nvidia Corp., Macquarie Group Ltd., 1789 Capital, and Jeff Bezos’ investment vehicle, Bezos Expeditions. In addition, new supporters including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Salesforce are involved, as are longtime investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Coatue Management.
Since its establishment in 2023, Pittsburgh-based Skild has raised almost $2 billion. In the middle of 2024, the corporation was worth roughly $4.5 billion.
By focusing on general-purpose intelligence rather than task-specific automation, Skild is among a new wave of robotics businesses that are drawing significant investment. Its flagship product, the Skild Brain, is a universal artificial intelligence system that, like humans, can adapt to different robots, surroundings, and activities by learning via practice and observation.
“The ‘Internet of Robots’ does not exist,” asserts Pathak. “Building a general robotic brain requires real-world data, and that has been our focus from day one.”
Large libraries of human movies and simulation data are used to train the Skild Brain, which operates on conventional GPUs without the need for specialized hardware. Robots’ actions and mistakes in real-world settings provide feedback that keeps them performing better. Situational awareness and resilience are made possible by the system’s integration of external information, such as vision, with internal signals, such as force and joint movement.
President and co-founder Abhinav Gupta claims that the technology enhances safety and dependability by enabling robots to adapt even when components malfunction. He claims that even if an arm breaks, the robot still accomplishes the work.
With the additional financing, Skild intends to roll out robots in more areas, improve training methods, and increase software distribution. With uses in hospitals, warehouses, residences, airports, and building sites, the platform accommodates a broad variety of machines, such as quadrupeds, robotic arms, and humanoids.
In 2025, the firm claims to have grown from $0 to tens of millions of dollars in sales in a matter of months, and it currently serves over eight clients. LG CNS is working with the company on humanoid robotics solutions, and one client has installed a Skild-powered service robot to monitor the quality of the air at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
In order to get exposure to up-and-coming AI talent, big tech companies are increasingly opting for strategic investments rather than big acquisitions, which is reflected in Skild’s skyrocketing price. As the market shifts toward general-purpose machines, Nvidia, Samsung, and other companies continue to support several robotics startups.
Skild, which employs over 100 people from firms including Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon, and Google, places itself at the epicenter of what experts refer to as robotics’ “GPT moment,” when robots evolve from single-purpose tools to flexible, intelligent systems.
The founders think that rather than displacing human labor, improved robotics would eventually fill over a million hazardous or unattractive professions in the US. According to Pathak, “this isn’t happening overnight.” “The long-term effects could be positive, and we have time to prepare.”
