Unicorn startup Skild AI has finally unveiled the robot “brain” it’s been quietly working on since 2023.
Skild Brain is the startup’s new general-purpose AI model, designed to power a wide range of robots and tasks with a single system. The company recently released footage of its AI model being used in humanoid, dog and table-top arm robots completing various tasks, after months of staying quiet about its most recent high-profile raise.
The reveal is another step toward the company’s goal of building a “unified, omni-bodied brain to control any robot for any task,” according to its website. But despite those lofty goals, we still don’t know much about the financials behind the startup. Its recent raises aren’t backed up by Form Ds, which startups are required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission — at least not under the name Skild, according to a Technical.ly analysis.
Skild Brain can be adapted to handle tasks from dishwashing to climbing slippery slopes, according to president and cofounder Abhinav Gupta. The tech is also safe to use around humans, since it is trained to apply low force and is highly adaptive to human interactions, which has been limited or missing in other AI models, according to the recent release.
“A lot of current robotics models focus on tasks that are hard for humans and easy for robots: dancing, kung-fu, because they are free-space actions and do not require any generalization,” said Deepak Pathak, CEO and cofounder of Skild AI, in a recent release. “Skild AI models can not only solve these easy tasks but also solve everyday hard tasks such as climbing stairs even under adversarial conditions, or assembling fine-grained items, which require vision and reasoning about contact dynamics.”
What makes Skild different, according to the company, is that it was able to get enough data to train this type of complex AI model. The startup used large-scale simulations and videos of humans on the internet to pre-train the foundation model at scale, according to the release. Then, Skild post-trained the model with targeted real-world data.
Skild AI did not immediately return Technical.ly’s request to comment on how Skild Brain could be deployed commercially in the near term or to confirm recent funding reports.
Skild’s mysterious year of big-money raises
In April, Skild raised a $500 million Series B, boosting its valuation to $4.7 billion, led by big-name investors like Amazon, Nvidia, Softbank and Samsung. Before that, it raised $300 million in July 2024, which the company confirmed in a press release.
The only “Skild” filing that comes up in Form Ds is under a special purpose vehicle, a popular fundraising tool used by startups to let a group of investors act as one. The May filing logs just over $1 million raised, a far cry from the $814 million total reported by PitchBook.
Plus, an industry report on VC recently raised some questions about Skild’s headquarters. While Pittsburgh is listed as its HQ, it was only counted as a general “Pennsylvania” company in the latest Venture Monitor report.
Skild opened an office in San Francisco earlier this year, but that’s pretty common among local companies. The startup currently has 25 job openings on its website, with 19 hiring in Pittsburgh. The other locations include San Francisco, San Mateo and Bengaluru, India.
“Pittsburgh will still be our HQ,” a Skild spokesperson previously told the Pittsburgh Business Times, “this is expansion and great news for a company that spun out of Pittsburgh.”
Keep scrolling to see images of Skild’s newly unveiled tech.
