Skild AI raises $1.4 billion at $14 billion valuation

Robotics software developer Skild AI has secured a $1.4 billion Series C funding round, pushing its valuation to more than $14 billion, according to reports from Bloomberg. A Series C round represents a late-stage venture capital funding round. This latest investment was led by SoftBank, with participation from a group of investors that includes:

• Nvidia
• Macquarie Group
• 1789 Capital

This funding round represents an increase from the company’s previous valuation. This prior summer, Skild AI raised funding at a $4.5 billion valuation, as reported by Bloomberg. Although the company has not publicly disclosed the exact financial details of that earlier transaction, the previous round was rumored to be worth around $500 million. With the completion of this latest Series C round, Skild AI CEO Deepak Pathak noted that “the company has now raised more than $2 billion to date.”

Founded in 2023, Skild AI focuses on developing general-purpose robotic software and foundation models. In the artificial intelligence sector, foundation models are defined as large-scale AI models trained on vast data. Skild AI’s software is designed to be retrofitted to a variety of different robots and tasks without requiring a large amount of additional training. The company’s technology is built with the expectation that these models can also learn from watching humans perform tasks. This capability is intended to address one of the biggest hurdles in robot adoption for both personal and industrial use cases: the sheer amount of training required for robots to learn each and every new task. Being able to learn and adapt as they go would clear the path for more robotic adoption.

This push into learn-as-you-go robotic software is occurring alongside rising interest in humanoid robots, leading to increased competition in the sector. Skild AI faces competition from other startups looking to build easily adapted robotic software, such as Field AI. Additionally, 1X, a competitor building humanoid robots, recently released a world model—an AI model that understands physical world dynamics—in pursuit of the same goal of enabling robots to adapt to new environments and tasks.

Why it matters

Skild AI’s valuation has more than tripled in just seven months, underscoring significant investor interest in foundation models that can power general-purpose robotics.