Overview
- SoftBank and Nvidia are negotiating a funding round exceeding $1 billion for Skild AI at about a $14 billion valuation, according to sources and a term sheet reported by Reuters.
- The deal would nearly triple Skild’s $4.7 billion valuation from a $500 million Series B earlier this year that included Nvidia, LG’s venture arm and Samsung, PitchBook data show.
- Skild builds robot-agnostic foundation models as a software brain rather than hardware, and in July it unveiled Skild Brain with demos of household and warehouse tasks alongside partnerships with LG CNS and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
- Skild, SoftBank and Nvidia declined to comment, and sources say details could change with a potential closing targeted before Christmas.
- The prospective investment aligns with CEO Masayoshi Son’s robotics strategy after SoftBank bought ABB’s robotics unit for $5.4 billion, as investor and policy interest in robotics grows despite expert caution about broad adoption timelines.