Generalist wants to make “general intelligence” robotics a reality.
US AI robotics company Generalist has raised $400 million at a reported valuation of $2 billion to accelerate its plans to achieve “physical” artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The round was led by Radical Ventures with participation from Nvidia’s venture arm NVentures, Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, World Labs founder and AI guru Fei-Fei Li, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan.
Other participants include 8VC, Union Square Ventures, hanabi Capital, Norwest, Boldstart Ventures, Spark Capital, NFDG, and serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant.
Generalist, with a team of AI and robotics experts with experience across Big Tech, wants to make “general intelligence” robotics a reality.
The company was founded in 2024 by former DeepMind scientists Pete Florence and Andy Zheng, and former Boston Dynamics roboticist and Harvard University machine learning scientist Andrew Barry.
Generalist announced its Gen 0-class AI model last November, which the company said was trained on an “unprecedented” scale of real-world data. The company said the model has proven that physical experience and larger models can predictably produce more capable systems.
He added that the company launched Gen-1 in April, demonstrating commercial feasibility. Generalist said Gen-1 was three times faster than similar state-of-the-art models, demonstrated 99% reliability across a variety of tasks, and demonstrated the ability to learn new and complex physical skills.
“Enhanced robot learning creates better models, better models can perform more useful physical tasks, and data from real businesses drives the next generation of more capable models,” the company said in a statement.
The new funding will enable Generalist to continue “expanding robotic learning,” including building new models, expanding its physical data engine, expanding its computing and training infrastructure, and collaborating with industry for commercialization.
“Our goal is not to be tied to a single methodology or label. Our goal is to build everything needed to achieve physical AGI,” the company said.
The exact definition of AGI is difficult to pin down. According to Google, AGI refers to the virtual intelligence of machines that allows them to “understand” or “learn” intellectual tasks that humans can perform, while IBM calls it “the abstract goal of AI development” and that human intelligence can be replicated by machines or software.
The rise of robotics
The robotics industry has received new energy in recent years from the push toward AI. For Nvidia, the world’s largest chipmaker, robotics represents its biggest market for growth potential after AI.
Last month, Meta Inc. reportedly acquired U.S. startup Assured Robot Intelligence to advance its plans for humanoid robot hardware to assist with household chores, and Amazon made its own robotics acquisition in March with Fauna Robotics Inc.
Meanwhile, Alphabet’s robotics software research and development company Intrinsic has joined Google, working closely with DeepMind and leveraging Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud services.
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