Physical Intelligence, a robotics artificial intelligence (AI) startup, has raised $400m in a funding round.
The investment was spearheaded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and venture capital firms Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, reports The New York Times.
Go deeper with GlobalData
OpenAI, Redpoint Ventures, and Bond also contributed to the round.
The funding positions Physical Intelligence at a post-money valuation of $2.4bn, according to CNBC.
This valuation marks a substantial increase from the company’s March seed round, which valued the company at $400m after a $70m investment.
Physical Intelligence was co-founded in 2023 by Karol Hausman, previously a robotics scientist at Google; Sergey Levine, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley; and Lachy Groom, a former executive at Stripe.
How well do you really know your competitors?
Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.
Thank you!
Your download email will arrive shortly
Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample
We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form
By GlobalDataThe San Francisco, California-based company seeks to develop universally compatible software for robots, aiming to circumvent the need for task-specific programming.
This project requires extensive real-world operational data, which is currently scarce.
Consequently, Physical Intelligence is compiling its own datasets, supported by advancements in AI models that can process visual information.
The startup’s website states its goal is to bring “general-purpose AI into the physical world”.
Recently, Physical Intelligence published a paper demonstrating the capabilities of its software, π0 (pi-zero), which enabled robots to perform various household tasks.
Over the past eight months, the company has been developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots
In its blog, the company said: “We believe this is a first step toward our long-term goal of developing artificial physical intelligence, so that users can simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants.”
Physical Intelligence explained that its model, like LLMs, is trained on diverse data and follows text instructions.
However, it also spans images, text, and actions, gaining physical intelligence through robotic training to output motor commands.
It can control various robots and be either prompted for tasks or fine-tuned for specific applications.
In August 2024, a Bezos-led funding round valued Swiss robot maker Swiss-Mile at $100m (SFr86m).
The Amazon founder supported a seed funding round for this deep tech spin-off from ETH Zurich, aiming to raise approximately $20m.
