Generalist, a robotics startup, has reached a $3 billion valuation following additional capital raising led by 8VC, according to two individuals with knowledge of the funding. The new capital totals nearly $200 million, as per a regulatory filing. This follows a $400 million Series B round led by Radical Ventures, which was announced in June at a $2 billion valuation. The latest round brings the total funding for the Series B to $600 million. Generalist and 8VC did not respond to a request for comment.
The startup, founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers Pete Florence and Andy Zeng, along with former Boston Dynamics engineer Andrew Barry, has received early backing from 8VC, Radical Ventures, Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, and AI researcher Fei-Fei Li. Until recently, Generalist operated with minimal publicity. The company is developing an AI foundation model that can work with various robots. Its newly released Gen 1.5 model allows robots to master new tasks from video demonstrations as short as 3 to 12 seconds. The startup is working with a small number of customers, using their feedback to tailor the model for specific use cases, according to one source.
Generalist is not the only company pursuing a general-purpose robotics model. Competitors include Physical Intelligence, valued at $11 billion, and Skild AI, backed by SoftBank and valued at $14 billion. Genesis AI, which was in talks to raise capital at a $3 billion valuation as of last month, is also in the space. The funding surge reflects investor confidence that robotics may soon reach a 'ChatGPT moment,' where robots can perform general tasks without explicit training for each one. However, some VCs caution that a truly general robotics model may still be years away due to the limitations in training robots on the full internet dataset, unlike large language models.
Source: techcrunch
