Robotics startup Generalist reaches $3 billion valuation, people involved say

Robotics startup Generalist is now valued at $3 billion after additional funding led by 8VC, according to two people familiar with the funding.

The new capital will total approximately $200 million, according to regulatory filings. The additional capital is an extension of a $400 million Series B led by Radical Ventures that the company announced in June at a valuation of $2 billion, the people said. The new capital brings the round’s total funding to $600 million.

Generalist and 8VC did not respond to requests for comment.

Generalist was founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers Pete Florence and Andy Zeng, and former Boston Dynamics engineer Andrew Barry. The company received early backing from 8VC and Radical Ventures, Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, and AI researcher Fei-Fei Li.

Until recently, the startup operated quietly with little publicity.

Generalist develops AI-based models that can work with a variety of robots. The company claims its newly released 1.5 generation model allows robots to learn new tasks from video demonstrations as short as 3 to 12 seconds.

One source said the startup is working with a small number of customers and using their feedback to tailor the model to specific use cases.

Generalists aren’t the only ones seeking to build a broader robot brain. Other competitors include Physical Intelligence, reportedly valued at $11 billion, SoftBank-backed Skilled AI (valued at $14 billion), and Genesis AI, which was in talks to raise capital at a $3 billion valuation as of last month.

This surge in funding reflects some investors’ bets that robotics may soon reach its own “ChatGPT moment,” where robots will be able to perform common tasks without being explicitly trained for each task. But some venture capitalists warn that a truly general robotics model may still be years away, since robots cannot be trained using the entire internet’s data as LLM does.