Generalist, a robotics startup, has reached a valuation of $3 billion after raising nearly $200 million in additional capital led by 8VC, according to two sources familiar with the funding. This new capital is an extension of a $400 million Series B round led by Radical Ventures, which was announced in June at a valuation of $2 billion. The total funding for this round now amounts to $600 million.
Generalist and 8VC did not respond to requests for comment. Founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers Pete Florence and Andy Zeng, along with former Boston Dynamics engineer Andrew Barry, Generalist has received early support from 8VC, Radical Ventures, Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, and AI researcher Fei-Fei Li.
The startup has operated with minimal publicity until recently. Generalist is developing an AI foundation model designed to work with various robots, claiming that its newly released Gen 1.5 model allows robots to learn new tasks from video demonstrations as short as 3 to 12 seconds.
The company is currently collaborating with a select group of customers to refine the model for specific applications, according to one source. Generalist faces competition from other companies in the robotics space, including Physical Intelligence, valued at $11 billion, SoftBank-backed Skild AI, valued at $14 billion, and Genesis AI, which was reportedly in discussions last month to raise capital at a $3 billion valuation.
The recent funding surge indicates investor optimism that robotics may soon experience a significant breakthrough akin to the “ChatGPT moment,” where robots could perform a wide range of tasks without needing explicit training for each one. However, some venture capitalists caution that developing a truly general robotics model may still take years, as robots cannot be trained on the vast data available on the internet in the same way that large language models can.