Nvidia And Samsung Back $4.5B Robotics Startup Skild AI With $35M As SoftBank And Jeff Bezos Drive Push Into Consumer Robots
Samsung has committed $10 million to the round, using the investment to keep strategic visibility into Skild's technology and talent pipeline without committing to full-scale acquisition. According to Bloomberg, Nvidia is contributing $25 million, reinforcing its growing push into what CEO Jensen Huang has described as the "physical AI" revolution.
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The round follows Skild's $300 million Series A raise in July 2024, which Skild AI says included backing from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank, and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos through Bezos Expeditions.
Skild AI says it is developing a shared "foundation model" that acts as a general-purpose brain for a wide range of robots across manipulation, locomotion, and navigation tasks. The startup notes that this model represents a step change in how robotic systems will scale, with long-term ambitions to build artificial general intelligence grounded in the physical world.
Skild AI positions its technology as a scalable solution to the U.S. labor shortage, particularly in high-risk industries like oil rigs and manufacturing. A study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute projects that over 2.1 million U.S. manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2030, and the startup believes its adaptable foundation model could help rebalance labor across sectors.
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Nvidia's investment aligns with its broader ecosystem strategy to integrate intelligent robotics into everyday environments, from homes to factories to autonomous vehicles. According to Bloomberg, the company already supports startups like Figure AI and Serve Robotics and offers the necessary semiconductors and software infrastructure to support robotics deployment at scale.
Samsung sees the Skild investment as a way to monitor emerging robotics breakthroughs while staying competitive with fellow South Korean conglomerates like LG, Hanwha, and Mirae Asset, which have also committed capital to Skild AI, Bloomberg reports.
Samsung has recently taken similar minority stakes in robotics startups such as Physical Intelligence, which focuses on robotic control algorithms. According to Bloomberg, the giant also holds the largest share in Rainbow Robotics, a firm focused on humanoid robots, and plans to launch a domestic robot named Ballie later this year in collaboration with Google.Bloomberg says that despite Samsung viewing some of Skild's capabilities as lagging behind other options on the market, the investment signals growing confidence in the startup's long-term potential.
Robotics is evolving into one of the most competitive and capital-intensive arenas in tech, with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Meta (NASDAQ:META), Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG, GOOGL)) Google, Amazon, and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) all accelerating work on consumer and humanoid robotics platforms, Bloomberg says.
With heavyweight investors now backing its vision, Skild AI may be emerging as a major rival in the race to bring adaptable, intelligent robots into real-world environments at scale.
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