- Jeff Bezos just invested in an artificial intelligence startup creating digital brains for robots.
- Physical Intelligence's software lets robots perform a variety of tasks.
Jeff Bezos' latest investment is an artificial intelligence startup that is trying to create software for robots that can do a variety of tasks — from folding laundry to clearing tables after a meal.
The startup, Physical Intelligence, has raised $400 million in financing in a round led by the Amazon executive chairman and venture capital firms Lux Capital and Thrive Capital, The New York Times reported on Monday. Thrive Capital confirmed to Business Insider the firm's participation in the funding raise.
The funding round gives Physical Intelligence a $2 billion pre-money valuation.
At Physical Intelligence (π) our mission is to bring general-purpose AI into the physical world.
— Physical Intelligence (@physical_int) October 31, 2024
We're excited to show the first step towards this mission - our first generalist model π₀
Paper, blog, uncut videos: https://t.co/XZ4Luk8Dci pic.twitter.com/XHCu1xZJdq
Many startups are developing robots that can perform one specific task, such as dispensing ingredients at a restaurant.
Physical Intelligence says that it wants robots using its software to be able to do a range of jobs — "a true generalist," as Karol Hausman, the startup's chief executive, cofounder, and a former robotics scientist at Google, told the Times.
The startup created a general-purpose robot foundation model, called pi-zero, using data gathered from eight different robots. Using the model, each robot performed a different task. Physical Intelligence also used open-source data to create its software.
"Our goal in selecting these tasks is not to solve any particular application, but to start to provide our model with a general understanding of physical interactions — an initial foundation for physical intelligence," the company said in its October post.
The result is a robot that can move between jobs. The startup says that its mission is to "develop foundation models that can control any robot to perform any task."
One video that Physical Intelligence posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, shows a robot retrieving laundry from a dryer before folding it on a table. Another video shows a robot that uses pi-zero to separate trash from dishes, cups, and silverware as it clears a table after a meal.
π₀ is a VLA generalist:
— Physical Intelligence (@physical_int) October 31, 2024
- it performs dexterous tasks (laundry folding, table bussing and many others)
- transformer+flow matching combines benefits of VLM pre-training and continuous action chunks at 50Hz
- it's pre-trained on a large π dataset spanning many form factors pic.twitter.com/zX9hvVdQuH
To clear the table, the robot had to learn multiple smaller actions first, the company said. "Instead of simply grasping each item in turn, the model could stack multiple dishes to put them into the bin together, or shake off trash from a plate into the garbage before placing the plate into the bussing bin," Physical Intelligence said in a post.
The robot can also fold a cardboard box and put eggs into a carton, according to videos posted to the company's website.
Physical Intelligence says that its work is not perfect. The startup's post also includes videos of robots that used pi-zero failing to complete the task that they were assigned. The company also said that "generalist robot policies are still in their infancy, and we have a long way to go."
"Our experiments so far show that such models can control a variety of robots and perform tasks that no prior robot learning system has done successfully, such as folding laundry from a hamper or assembling a cardboard box," the company's post reads.
Physical Intelligence, a representative for Bezos, and the other VC firms reportedly in the funding round did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
The startup's funding raise comes as major tech players invest in robotics. Elon Musk's Tesla has been developing a humanoid robot for use in both factories and the home. Meta recently announced it is researching touch perception in robotic hands, with Mark Zuckerberg calling the work "an important step on the path to AGI." OpenAI and Microsoft have invested in humanoid robot startup Figure AI.
Amazon is also partnered with Agility Robotics for warehouse robots, including the bipedal robot Digit.