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Over 300 organizations rely on The Information for exclusive insights into public and private companies, including in-depth analysis of the ways in which tech moves markets. Click here to contact our corporate and enterprise team to learn more. Welcome back! Robotics startups are taking over the fundraising market. On Wednesday, my colleague Michael and I published a scoop about Foundation, a robotics startup launched by the former CEO of failed fintech firm Synapse, seeking capital at a $1 billion valuation despite just a year under its belt. That’s one of several robotics rounds in play. Skild AI, which makes artificial intelligence foundation models to direct many kinds of robots, is nearing a deal to raise $500 million at a $4.2 billion valuation, not including the investment, according to two people with direct knowledge of the fundraising talks. SoftBank is leading the round, with participating investments from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, CRV and General Catalyst, the people said. All those firms invested in the company’s Series A funding last year that valued the company at $1.5 billion. The new valuation is about $200 million higher than the targeted price in January when talks started, a result of investors clamoring to put capital into the deal, we hear. Robots are hot—but particularly when they’ve started to generate significant revenue, which is far off for some. The two-year-old startup has recently started to generate several millions of dollars in recurring revenue and wants to reach at least $30 million in annualized recurring revenue this year, according to the same two people. The revenue target and new valuations have not been previously reported. Skild’s AI foundation models direct robot dogs and two-legged humanoids to carry out physical tasks, from household chores to warehouse labor. The company is expanding into hardware as well, and plans to use money from the round to make more robots. Once those robots are built, they could help collect more data to improve the company’s AI models, according to one of those people. To build robots—and AI models—these startups need a lot of money. Agility, which builds humanoid robots to work in warehouses, is raising $400 million in its current funding round. Humanoid maker Figure AI has been trying to raise $1.5 billion at a $40 billion valuation. And we’re hearing other robot startups making robotic software and five-fingered hands are raising seed and Series A rounds. They can lean on some enthusiastic investors like SoftBank, which previously owned robot maker Boston Dynamics. Besides its investment in Skild, SoftBank is leading a $40 billion funding round for OpenAI, which is also mulling its own robot effort. The robot startups and their backers face a host of challenges, of course. Besides getting the robots to work, they have to weather increased hardware costs because of tariff hikes on Chinese technology—not to mention advances in China’s humanoid robots. Established tech companies including Google and Tesla are working on their own humanoid robotics efforts. In fact, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified to a Senate Committee on Thursday that “AI-powered robotics could push AI-driven productivity gains into the physical world” by 2027. If that prediction holds, you can expect the robot fever to spike in the next two years.
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