Skild AI, a Pittsburgh-based AI robotics company developing a foundation model designed to serve as a general-purpose “brain” for multiple types of robots, announced it has raised close to $1.4 billion in new funding at a valuation above $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. Existing backers Lightspeed, Felicis, Coatue, and Sequoia Capital increased their stakes, while strategic investors joining the financing included Samsung, LG, Schneider, CommonSpirit, and Salesforce Ventures. Additional investors named by the company included TF Capital, Andra Capital, Palo Alto Growth Capital, KIC, Alpha Square, Mirae Asset, and Destiny.
At the center of Skild AI’s pitch is what it calls the “Skild Brain,” a unified robotics foundation model intended to control different robot forms without being tailored to a single design. The company describes the model as “omni-bodied,” meaning it can operate across morphologies such as quadrupeds, humanoids, tabletop arms, and mobile manipulators, with the aim of enabling robots to perform tasks ranging from household chores to more physically demanding work, such as navigating slippery terrain.
Skild AI said one of the key constraints in building broadly capable robotics models is the lack of a large, internet-scale dataset of robot interactions. To address this, the company said it pre-trains the Skild Brain using alternative data sources, including learning from human videos and practicing in physics-based simulations, to expand the range of behaviors and environments the system can learn from.
The company also said the Skild Brain can adapt to unexpected real-world conditions—such as damaged limbs, jammed wheels, or increased payload—without retraining or fine-tuning. Skild AI attributed much of that flexibility to in-context learning, where the model adjusts behavior based on live experience when deployed on new robot bodies or in unfamiliar environments. The company said related work has earned best paper nominations at top robotics conferences.
Skild AI, founded in 2023, said it has offices in Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Bengaluru, India. It also claimed rapid commercial traction, saying it grew from zero to about $30 million in revenue within a few months in 2025 and is deploying its technology across use cases including security and facility inspection, last-mile and point-to-point delivery, warehouses, manufacturing, data centers, and construction-related tasks. The company said it expects enterprise deployments to lead initially, with a longer-term ambition to bring robotics into consumer homes.
Skild AI said the new capital will be used to scale model training and expand deployments, with the broader aim of creating a data flywheel in which performance improves with every deployment, regardless of the robot hardware or task.
KEY QUOTES:
“The Skild Brain can control robots it has never trained on, adapting in real time to extreme changes in form or environments. The model is forced to adapt rather than memorize – much like intelligence in nature. We believe that a unified, omni-bodied brain is the fastest way to establish a continuous data flywheel where the model gets better with every single deployment, no matter what the hardware or task.”
Deepak Pathak, CEO and Co-Founder, Skild AI
“We believe this omni-bodied learning is essential for building AGI that works reliably in the physical world, paving the way for robots that can safely help humans in everyday environments. This enables robots to operate dynamically in complex environments, without requiring preprogrammed instructions for each scenario.”
Abhinav Gupta, Co-Founder and President, Skild AI
“Skild AI is building foundational technology for Physical AI across robots, tasks, and environments. We’re proud to partner with Deepak, Abhinav, and the Skild AI team to bring that shared vision into real-world applications worldwide.”
Dennis Chang, Managing Partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers
“Solving intelligence for the physical world unlocks enormous commercial value and long-term strategic national importance. Skild AI is uniquely positioned to do both, and we’re excited to be working with this team as they build.”
Rita Waite, Partner, IQT
