Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (left), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.
Reuters
Physical Intelligence, a San Francisco-based robotics startup, has raised $400 million at a post-cash valuation of $2.4 billion, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.
Investors included Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital, and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Bond Capital said it had also invested. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company's website.
Physical Intelligence's new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which was reported to have been $70 million at a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes graduates Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.
The startup is focused on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” according to its website, and aims to do this by developing large-scale AI models and algorithms to power robots. The startup has spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that this model will be the first step towards its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a term used to describe artificial intelligence technology that is equal to or superior to human intelligence in a wide range of tasks.
The news comes days after OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, which positions the AI startup to better compete with search engines like Google, Microsoft's Bing, and Perplexity. Last month, OpenAI also closed its latest $157 billion funding round.
Physical Intelligence's vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just as they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physics Intelligence details how its technology could allow a robot to do laundry, move tables, or assemble a box.
