Robot AI startup Physical Intelligence seeks $1B at $11B valuation
What's the deal? Physical Intelligence, a two-year-old San Francisco robotics startup, is in talks to raise about $1 billion at a valuation exceeding $11 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Peter ThielDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s Founders Fund is set to participate, with Lightspeed Venture Partners also in discussions alongside returning backers Thrive Capital and Lux Capital. The deal is still at an early stage.
The raise would effectively double the company's $5.6 billion valuation in just four months, following a $600 million round in November 2026. Physical Intelligence has already raised more than $1 billion from investors including Jeff BezosDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Alphabet's CapitalG, Redpoint Ventures, and BOND.
Why now? Founded by former Google DeepMind researchers and AI academics, Physical Intelligence is building what co-founder Sergey LevineDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → describes as "ChatGPT, but for robots" — general-purpose AI models that can power robots to perform a wide variety of physical tasks, from folding clothes to peeling vegetables to assembling boxes. The goal is for robots to execute any function a user requests, in the same way large language models handle digital tasks on command.
Investor appetite for physical AI is surging. Humanoid robotics startup Skild AI recently reached a valuation of more than $14 billion; Figure AIDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → is valued at $39 billion. Big Tech is piling in too — Alphabet's DeepMind, Apple, and Meta are all building in the space. Co-founder Lachy GroomDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has said there is "no limit" to how much compute the company can put to work.
What could go wrong? Physical Intelligence has no timeline for commercialisation — an unusual posture even by frontier AI standards. The company employs around 80 people and has yet to deploy its software beyond testing environments. At an $11 billion valuation, it is priced for a future that remains entirely unproven commercially.
The broader robotics field has a long history of technical ambition outrunning practical deployment. Teaching robots to generalise across physical tasks is an unsolved research problem, and investors betting on a single platform to crack it are taking on substantial scientific as well as financial risk.
The signal: Physical AI is emerging as the next major frontier in venture capital, as investors look beyond software to systems that can act in the real world. The race to back the "foundation model for robots" mirrors the early scramble to back large language model labs — with similar levels of uncertainty, and similar conviction that whoever gets there first will be very hard to displace.
Sources:
TechCrunch
Bloomberg
PYMNTS
The Economic Times
Incrypted
BWDisrupt
Image credits:
Physical Intelligence
J.V.
