Physical Intelligence, a new artificial intelligence (AI) company that is developing software for robots, has raised US$400 million (A$606 million).
The early-stage funding values the San Francisco-based start-up at $2.4 billion, which is six times the valuation in March.
The latest fund round came from investors including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, venture capital firms Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Bond.
Physical Intelligence is developing software that would work on any robot, eliminating the need for software for specific tasks.
“What we’re doing is not just a brain for any particular robot,” Physical Intelligence co-founder and Chief Executive said Karol Hausman was quoted as saying.
“It’s a single generalist brain that can control any robot.”
The world’s largest technology companies including Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon and Nvidia are investing billions of dollars in AI, with significant funds being deployed in robotics.
In a blog Physical Intelligence says it has developed a model it believes is a first step toward the long-term goal of developing AI which enables users to ask robots to perform any task such as folding a shirt or cleaning up a table.
“We are living through an AI revolution: the past decade witnessed practically useful AI assistants, AI systems that can generate photorealistic images and videos, and even models that can predict the structure of proteins,” the company says.
“But in spite of all these advances, human intelligence dramatically outpaces AI when it comes to the physical world.