SoftBank is negotiating a $500 million investment in Skild AI, a 2-year-old robotics software company building a foundational model for robots. The proposed deal would value Skild AI at $4 billion, Bloomberg and Financial Times reported.
A larger valuation for Skild AI
The reported talks would mark a sharp step up from Skild AI’s previous funding round. Last July, the company raised $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from investors including Jeff Bezos, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Coatue Management.
Skild AI’s focus is software, not a single robot design. Founders Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta told TechCrunch last July that the company’s AI model can be applied to various types of robots. They also said the generalized model can be modified for a specific domain and use case.
That distinction matters because robotics has long involved highly specific machines built for highly specific tasks. A foundational model for robotics points toward a different approach: software that can be adapted across robot categories rather than being limited to one narrow configuration.
Why investors are watching robot AI
The intersection of robotics and AI has drawn substantial investor interest. Over the recent year, investors, particularly Bezos, have increased their funding to AI-powered robotics companies.
Skild AI fits into that broader pattern because its pitch centers on a generalized AI model for physical machines. If a model can be modified for a specific domain and use case, it could become part of how different robot builders approach intelligence, control, and task adaptation.
The reported SoftBank investment is still being negotiated, so the source does not describe it as completed. But the size of the potential investment and the valuation being discussed show how much attention companies building robotics AI are attracting.
Other robotics funding rounds show the pattern
Skild AI is not the only startup drawing large checks in this area. Physical Intelligence raised $400 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation in November. That company is another startup claiming to be developing “brains” for a broad range of robots.
Jeff Bezos, Lux Capital, and Thrive Capital led Physical Intelligence’s round. The language around “brains” is similar in spirit to Skild AI’s broader robotics model approach: both companies are described as working on intelligence that could apply across more than one kind of machine.
Another example is Figure AI, a startup building an AI-powered humanoid robot. Last February, Figure AI raised $675 million at a $2.6 billion valuation from Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, and Jeff Bezos through Bezos Expeditions.
What the Skild AI talks signal
The reported SoftBank talks place Skild AI among a set of robotics companies benefiting from investor appetite for AI-powered machines. The common thread is not simply robotics hardware. It is the idea that AI systems can give robots more flexible capabilities.
For Skild AI, the central claim is that its model can be used with various types of robots and then adjusted for particular domains and use cases. That gives investors a software-centered way to back robotics without tying the entire opportunity to one specific machine or form factor.
The funding context also shows how quickly valuations in this area can move. Skild AI’s previous round valued the company at $1.5 billion last July. The reported SoftBank negotiation would value it at $4 billion.
For now, the most important caveat is that the SoftBank investment is described as being under negotiation. The available source does not say the deal has closed. What it does show is that robotics AI remains a major area of attention for large investors and high-profile backers.