Latest news with #XavierNiel
Business Insider
06-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Genesis AI Raises $105M to Train Robotics AI Aiming at $30T Labor Market
Genesis AI, a private company, has raised $105 million in seed funding to develop a universal robotics foundation model (RFM) designed to automate physical labor across industries. The round was co-led by Eclipse Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Bpifrance, HSG, and notable investors including former Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and French billionaire Xavier Niel. Don't Miss TipRanks' Half-Year Sale Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. The company, founded in December 2024, operates out of Palo Alto and Paris. Its co-founders are Zhou Xian, a Carnegie Mellon robotics Ph.D. holder, and Théophile Gervet, a former researcher at Mistral AI. Genesis Aims for Full Stack Approach Genesis AI's core product is a large-scale model designed to equip robots with the ability to handle a wide range of real-world tasks. Its in-house physics simulation engine generates high-quality synthetic data, reducing the need for expensive and time-consuming real-world data collection. Combined with a data pipeline for real robot interactions, the company claims it can build robotics AI systems faster and more cost-effectively than competitors relying on third-party tools. The goal is to bring general-purpose robotics closer to reality by making it more flexible, robust, and cost-efficient. Genesis AI plans to release components of its model and data engine to the developer community by the end of 2025. $30 Trillion to $40 Trillion in Global GDP According to the company, over 95% of physical labor worldwide remains unautomated, despite accounting for an estimated $30 trillion to $40 trillion in global GDP. Genesis AI is targeting this opportunity with a full-stack approach that spans simulation, generative modeling, and real-world deployment. While competitors like Tesla (TSLA) and Nvidia (NVDA) focus on hardware or modular platforms, Genesis AI is betting that foundation models will define the next phase of robotics. If successful, its platform could support a range of use cases, from warehouse operations to consumer robots. Using TipRanks' comparison tool, we've assembled and compared the tickers appearing in the piece that operate in the robotics sector. This helps investors gain a proper perspective on each stock's performance and the industry as a whole.
LeMonde
05-07-2025
- Business
- LeMonde
French workers strike over reduced remote work: 'If I don't have the option, my life is completely dedicated to the company'
A breath of fresh air. When remote working became the norm during the Covid-19 pandemic, Thibault (not his real name), age 46, found a better balance between his professional and personal life. "It allowed me to see my children when they woke up in the morning and to put them to bed at night, which makes a huge difference. And the burden of looking after the children was no longer solely on my wife. If I don't have remote work, my life is entirely devoted to my company from morning to night, including the commute," said the employee of the French banking giant Société Générale, which rebranded as SG in 2023. On June 27, he was one of many who went on strike to protest the bank's announcement of reduced remote work. On Thursday, July 3, as called by unions, he, like all employees, was asked to come "on site" wearing a green ribbon to show his resolve. Forty-eight hours earlier, on Tuesday, July 1, it was at Trax, the audiovisual division of mobile network Free (founded by Xavier Niel, a private shareholder of Groupe Le Monde), where industrial action began in response to measures restricting remote work. "This will have a huge impact on my life. I've been organizing my daily life around it for more than five years," said a developer, who requested anonymity.
Fashion Network
01-07-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Le Coq Sportif: The bid backed by Xavier Niel and Teddy Riner 'hampered', according to their lawyers
What's going on with Le Coq Sportif? The singing gallinaceous sports brand, official supplier to the French Olympic and Paralympic Team for Paris 2024, placed in receivership last November, is the subject of two takeover bids. However, after a number of twists and turns in the timetable, a decision was expected on July 4, but on Monday one of the consortiums carrying one of the takeover bids denounced the way it had been treated. According to its lawyers, the bid from the team comprising the American group Iconix and Xavier Niel, and backed by French judo champion Teddy Riner, was "deliberately hindered" and "weakened." With a decision expected from the Paris Business Court only a few days away, its lawyers are calling for "a reopening of the proceedings." The court is due to take a decision in a particularly electric climate surrounding a company that remains a modest player in world sport. The brand is still 75% owned by the Swiss company Airesis, which acquired it 20 years ago and has yet to unveil its annual results for 2024. At the end of the first half of 2024, Le Coq recorded sales of 82 million euros, up 30%, for a net loss of 18 million euros. In 2023, total sales were 121 million euros, with a loss of 28 million euros. Yet the brand, which employs some 300 people and has a workshop in Romilly sur Seine near Troyes, is far more powerful than its sales would suggest, particularly in France. As a result, the French Ministry of the Economy has been keeping a close eye on the case, attracting a number of key players to the takeover. Since mid-May, both parties have been making a series of discreet announcements in an attempt to tip the balance in their favor. The most likely bid is that of Franco-Swiss businessman Dan Mamane. Born in Toulon, the entrepreneur, as described in his profile in the Swiss media outlet Le Temps, moved to Switzerland at the age of 18 and graduated from HEC Lausanne. The Vaud-born entrepreneur built up his fortune in the electronics trade with the creation of his Powerdata group. He moved into retail in 2021, with the takeover and turnaround of Conforama Suisse, and earlier this year acquired the Ogier ski brand. At his side is former Fusalp CEO Alexandre Fauvet. Les Echos reports that Cédric Meston, head of Tupperware France, may also join the project. Although the details are not known, the fact that he would maintain jobs at the group's head office in Troyes would be a factor, as would the issue of receivables, which would limit the impact on local authority finances. The second offer came from a consortium comprising French billionaire Xavier Niel, judoka Teddy Riner, investment company Neopar, American group Iconix, as well as the current boss of Airesis, parent company of Le Coq Sportif, Marc-Henri Beausire, and the Camuset family, founders of the brand. In a five-page letter dated June 26 and addressed to the president of the court and the Paris public prosecutor - which AFP has obtained - the business law firm August Debouzy "requests the reopening of the debates within the framework of the examination of the draft recovery plans, in that the process followed to date has, in many respects, been vitiated by breaches of the fundamental principles governing collective proceedings." "It appears that the plan presented by the consortium made up of Iconix, Neopar, Airesis and their partners, despite having been duly submitted within the prescribed deadlines, has been deliberately hindered, weakened and then effectively ousted from the examination process," asserts the firm, which denounces a "methodical obstruction by the court-appointed administrators." According to August Debouzy, "the plan presented by the consortium was not rejected because of its economic or legal characteristics, but because the court-appointed administrators decided, from the very first weeks of the procedure, to make the plan supported by Mr. Mamane their own plan." According to the takeover plan made public in May, the consortium is 51% owned by Neopar, an investment company specializing in "company turnarounds" and owned by the Poitrinal family, 26.5% by investors, and 22.5% by the American group Iconix. The consortium had told AFP that it planned to contribute a total of 60 million euros, which would be "injected immediately" into the company. With AFP
Bloomberg
01-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Robotics Startup Raises $105 Million Seed From US, China VCs
Genesis AI, a startup working on software for robots, has raised $105 million in a funding round with both US and Chinese backers — a rarity in an industry split along geopolitical lines. The company, which lists headquarters in Paris and Palo Alto, California, announced the investment in a statement on Tuesday. Venture capital firms Khosla Ventures and Eclipse Capital led the financing, which also included participation from French public bank Bpifrance, tech billionaires Eric Schmidt and Xavier Niel, and HongShan, the fund formerly known as Sequoia China.
Cision Canada
01-07-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
Genesis AI Emerges From Stealth with $105M to Build Universal Robotics Foundation Model and Horizontal Platform for General-Purpose Physical AI
With funding co-led by Eclipse and Khosla Ventures, Genesis will develop breakthrough physical AI infrastructure to power the era of generalist robotics and automate all physical labor PARIS and PALO ALTO, Calif., July 1, 2025 /CNW/ -- Genesis AI, a global physical AI research lab and full-stack robotics company, emerged from stealth today with a mission to unlock unlimited physical labor. The company is building a universal robotics foundation model (RFM) and a horizontal robotics platform, raising $105 million co-led by Eclipse and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Bpifrance, HSG, and visionary leaders Eric Schmidt and Xavier Niel. Physical labor contributes an estimated $30-40 trillion to the Global GDP, yet over 95% of it remains unautomated due to the limitations of current automation solutions. Today's robotic systems, such as industrial arms, rely on brittle, rigid, and overfitted software stacks. These systems are narrow in scope, costly to deploy, and challenging to scale. Genesis aims to revolutionize the next generation of general-purpose robots by unlocking unprecedented robustness, flexibility, and cost efficiency – ultimately automating all physical labor. Genesis brings a data-centric, full-stack approach to physical AI – building a scalable and universal data engine that unifies high-fidelity physics simulation, multimodal generative modeling, and large-scale real robot data collection. Its simulation stack, developed entirely in-house, will generate rich synthetic data at scale, together with a more efficient and scalable real-world data collection system. This dual engine of synthetic and real data bridges historically siloed domains to collect the largest-scale, most diverse, and highest quality data to train RFMs. "General-purpose robots powered by physical AI will define the next major chapter of human history. While digital AI has made extraordinary progress, physical AI – the intelligence that allows machines to perceive, understand, and interact with the real world – has lagged behind," said Zhou Xian, CEO of Genesis. "We're here to change that. By building on the foundations laid by existing digital AI models, we're bringing human-level intelligence into the physical world. Genesis's unique approach by fueling digital AI knowledge to drive the emergence of physical AI will deliver unmatched capability, scalability, and cost-efficiency to unlock unlimited physical labor. With 75% of global companies struggling to fill jobs, physical AI is more essential than ever." Founded by top academic and industry technical talents from Mistral AI, Nvidia, Google, CMU, MIT, Stanford, Columbia and UMD, with deep expertise across the full stack of physics simulation, graphics, robotics, and large-scale AI model training and deployment, Genesis is well-positioned to rapidly execute its vision through a differentiated approach to physical AI. The company also plans to open-source components of its data engine and foundation model to empower developers, researchers, and partners to build on its breakthroughs and accelerate progress across the broader field of physical AI. "Even in the most 'automated' industries today, the robot-to-human ratio rarely exceeds 1:30, due to the long tail of tasks requiring dexterity, cognition, mobility, and real-world reasoning that current robots simply can't handle," said Eclipse Partner, Charly Mwangi. "General-purpose robotics is the breakthrough we've been waiting for and stands to impact trillions in labor value across sectors. Genesis has the vision, strategy, and world-class team to define the era of physical AI in order to unlock unlimited physical labor through general-purpose robotics." "Physical AI has yet to scale like LLMs because collecting and aligning real-world data can be operationally complex," said Kanu Gulati of Khosla Ventures. "Genesis is taking a full-stack approach by integrating best-in-class simulation data with real-world robotics data in a continuous, closed-loop system. Owning the entire data pipeline in-house gives them a unique data advantage. We're excited to back Genesis early as they work to build a universal foundation model for robotics." To learn more about Genesis or explore career opportunities to help define the future of robotics, please visit About Genesis Genesis is a global physical AI research lab and full-stack robotics company pioneering the world's first universal robotics foundation model and horizontal robotics platform. With a mission to unlock unlimited physical labor, Genesis empowers the deployment of general-purpose robots to perform the essential physical work that underpins the global economy. About Eclipse With ~$5 billion in assets under management, Eclipse is a team of operators and investors partnering with exceptional companies from ideation to all stages of growth to unlock solutions to age-old physical industry problems through the intersection of bits and atoms and the rise of physical AI. For more information, visit About Khosla Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investments in artificial intelligence, financial services, healthcare, consumer, enterprise, and sustainability sectors. It is known for making early capital investments in startups such as OpenAI, Instacart, Affirm, DoorDash, and Block.
