Generalist hopes to make ‘general intelligence’ robots a reality.
US AI robotics company Generalist has raised $400 million in a reported $2bn investment to accelerate its plans to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The round was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia company NVentures, Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, World Labs founder and leading AI expert 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.
With a team of AI and robotics experts experienced across Big Tech, Generalist hopes to make “general intelligence” robots a reality.
The company was founded in 2024 by former DeepMind scientists Pete Florence, Andy Zheng, and former Boston Dynamics scientist and Harvard machine learning scientist Andrew Barry.
Generalist introduced Gen-0 of its AI models last November, which it said were trained on an “unprecedented” amount of real-world data. The company said the model proves that physical experience with larger models can produce more capable systems.
In April, it launched Gen-1, which is showing good commercial performance, it added. Gen-1 was three times faster than similar models, demonstrated 99pc reliability in various tasks and demonstrated the ability to learn new and complex physical skills, according to Generalist.
“Learning to scale robots creates better models, better models can perform more useful physical work, and data from real businesses drives the next generation of skillful models,” the company said in a statement.
The new funding will allow Generalist to continue “scaling robot learning”, including building new models, scaling its virtual data engine, expanding its computing infrastructure and training and working with commercial enterprises.
“Our goal is not to commit to any one method or label. Our goal is to build whatever it takes to make true AGI a reality,” the company said.
The exact definition of AGI is hard to pin down. According to Google, AGI refers to the perceived intelligence of a machine that allows it to “understand” or “learn” mental functions that humans can achieve, while IBM calls it “the abstract goal of AI development”, where human intelligence can be replicated by machines or software.
The robots are going up
The robotics industry has gained renewed momentum in recent years, fueled by AI. For major chip maker Nvidia, robots represent the biggest potential growth market behind AI.
Last month, Meta acquired US startup Assured Robot Intelligence to pursue its plans for humanoid robotic hardware to help with household chores, and Amazon made its robotics-related acquisition Fauna Robotics in March.
Meanwhile, Alphabet’s robotics R&D company Intrinsic joined Google to work closely with DeepMind, and tap into Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud services.
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