Skild AI
American artificial intelligence and robotics company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Skild AI is an American artificial intelligence and robotics company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded in 2023, it develops a general-purpose foundation model for robots called the Skild Brain, designed to allow a single AI system to operate across different robot types and tasks without hardware-specific training.
Robotics
Abhinav Gupta
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Artificial intelligence Robotics |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Deepak Pathak Abhinav Gupta |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | Deepak Pathak (CEO and co-founder) Abhinav Gupta (president and co-founder) |
| Products | Skild Brain |
| Website | www |
Background
Skild AI was founded in 2023 by Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta, both of whom were professors at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute at the time of founding.[1][2] Both founders are graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.[3]
Pathak earned a PhD in AI at the University of California, Berkeley, and later co-founded VisageMap, a facial recognition startup that was subsequently acquired by FaceFirst.[1] Before founding Skild AI, he joined Facebook AI Research (FAIR) as a researcher and went on to become an assistant professor at CMU's Robotics Institute.[2] Gupta, who holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Maryland, served as a professor at CMU's Robotics Institute for more than 16 years, and had also held research positions at Meta, Google, and the Allen Institute for AI (AI2).[3][4]
The company operated in stealth mode until July 2024, when it publicly announced its first major funding round.[5]
Technology
Skild Brain
The Skild Brain is described by the company as the industry's first unified robotics foundation model. Unlike traditional models that are built for specific robot designs, it is designed to be "omni-bodied", meaning it can operate across different robot morphologies, including quadrupeds, humanoids, tabletop arms, and mobile manipulators, without prior knowledge of a robot's exact body form.[6]
Because there is no large pre-existing dataset of robotic actions comparable to the text corpora used for large language models, Skild AI trains the Skild Brain using alternative data sources: video of humans performing tasks sourced from the internet, and physics-based simulations.[6] The company has stated its training dataset is at least 1,000 times larger than those of competing models.[5]
In-context learning
A key feature of the Skild Brain is its use of in-context learning. When the model encounters a new robot body or an unfamiliar environment, it adjusts its behavior in real time based on live experience, rather than requiring retraining or fine-tuning. The company states this allows the model to adapt to unpredictable situations such as loss of limbs, jammed wheels, increased payload, or an entirely new robot platform.[6][7]
Funding
In July 2024, Skild AI closed a $300 million Series A round at a valuation of $1.5 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue Management, SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), with participation from Felicis Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, SV Angel, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Alexa Fund.[5]
In April 2025, Skild AI raised $500 million in a Series B round at a valuation of $4.7 billion, led by SoftBank along with participation from Nvidia, LG Technology Ventures, Samsung, and others.[4][8]
In January 2026, Skild AI announced a Series C round of close to $1.4 billion, bringing the company's valuation to over $14 billion. The round was led by SoftBank Group, with participation from NVentures (Nvidia's venture capital arm), Macquarie Capital, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), Disruptive, and 1789 Capital. Lightspeed, Felicis, Coatue, and Sequoia Capital increased their existing positions. Strategic investors in the round included Samsung, LG, Schneider Electric, CommonSpirit, and Salesforce Ventures.[6][9] Following this round, CEO Deepak Pathak stated the company had raised more than $2 billion in total.[9]
Operations
Skild AI's technology is deployed across multiple sectors, including security and facility inspection, last-mile delivery, warehouses, manufacturing, data centers, and construction.[6] The company reported growing from zero to approximately $30 million in revenue within a few months during 2025.[7] Skild AI has offices in Pittsburgh, San Mateo (California), and Bengaluru (India).[7]
The company has stated its long-term goal is to deploy robots in consumer homes, with enterprise applications as a first step.[6]
See also
- Foundation model
- Robotics
- Physical artificial intelligence
- Carnegie Mellon University