Last week, AI startup Physical Intelligence unveiled its first general robot model, π₀ (pi-zero), which can do everything from clearing the table after dinner to folding laundry. Earlier this year, the company was valued at $400 million.
Now, Monday’s report shows that the start-up has reached unicorn status, surpassing the value of $ 1 billion after raising $ 400 million, at a cost of $ 2.4 billion, from investors such as Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, and Thrive Capital.
Physical Intelligence’s goal is to bring general-purpose AI to the real world through robots, according to its website. It took them just eight months to develop the robot model π₀, the startup’s “first step” toward a future where robots process and perform tasks as easily as AI chatbots respond to commands.
“Our goal at Physical Intelligence is to develop basic models that can control any robot to perform any task,” the startup wrote in a blog post. “Our experiments so far show that such models can control various robots and perform tasks that no previous robot learning system has successfully performed.”
Related: Meet Figure 02, ‘The Most Advanced Humanoid Robot on the Market’ Supported by Jeff Bezos, OpenAI
What Can Robots Do?
A video released last week shows the π₀ robot taking clothes out of the dryer, putting them in a basket, placing the basket next to a table, and then taking out individual clothes and folding them into a neat stack.
Two π₀ robots also work together to load coffee into the coffee grinder: one robot holds a bag of coffee beans open while the other removes the beans. Two identical robots assemble a cardboard box.
Another π₀ robot cleans up after dinner by picking up fragile wine glasses, bowls and plates into the bin. The robot recognizes the difference between what needs to be put in the trash, such as food scraps, and what needs to be washed, such as a plate, and places each in its appropriate container.
At Physical Intelligence (π) our goal is to bring general purpose AI to the physical world.
We are very pleased to present the first step towards this goal – our first generalist model π₀ ? ?
Paper, blog, uncut videos: pic.twitter.com/XHCu1xZJdq
– Physical Intelligence (@physical_int) October 31, 2024
Although these early results show the robots are “in their infancy,” they “paint a promising picture” for the future of AI robots, according to Physical Intelligence.
Other robotics startups in the space include Figure AI, a $2.6 billion company backed by Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, and OpenAI that is developing humanoid robots.
Related: This Company Builds a New Kind of Robot: ‘Moves the Way People Walk’
