Genesis AI, a company cofounded by ex-Mistral scientist Theophile Gervet, has emerged from stealth announcing a $105m round only six months after launching.
Sifted understands the round closed in several tranches and comprises equity, convertible bonds and debt. Sifted previously reported the company had raised at least $85m.
The round was co-led by Khosla Ventures, a US investor which has also backed OpenAI, DoorDash and Stripe, and Eclipse Capital, another US investor which targets physical industries.
Investors also included Hong Kong-based VC HSG, public bank Bpifrance, and French investors Alven, Eurazeo, Drysdale Ventures, Motier Ventures and Adelie. French billionaire Xavier Niel and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt participated, as well as European VCs Northzone and Fly Ventures.
Genesis AI, previously known as Genesis Robotics, was cofounded by Gervet and Zhou Xian, who recently graduated with a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in the US. It plans to build a “data engine” to train AI models to power robots, pairing synthetic data with real-world data.
Synthetic data, which can be generated thanks to simulation platforms, has been pitched as an efficient way to train AI models for robotics because robots need huge amounts of data to make sure they can navigate the messiness of the real world, such as different lighting, surfaces, objects and obstacles.
“We’re building the most full-stack solution: combining high-fidelity simulation and rendering with large-scale real-world robot data to create the world’s most scalable robotics data engine,” wrote Gervet in a LinkedIn post announcing the fundraise.
“We’ll train robotics foundation models that can control any robot, for any task, anywhere.”
The company has offices in Paris and San Francisco, and already has a team of 22 employees.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/genesis-ai-105m-round/
