Rhoda Secures $450M for AI Robotics
AI robotics firm Rhoda just snagged $450M in funding at a $1.7B valuation [https://x.com/i/status/2031394689136705782]. They're training robots using internet videos and plan to build their own hardware and license out their models. Pretty wild to think robots are learning from YouTube now.
The Series A funding round was led by Premji Invest and several other investment groups also participated, including Khosla Ventures and Temasek Holdings. Rhoda AI is using the funding to further develop and deploy its AI model in industrial settings. Rhoda's AI, called FutureVision, aims to solve the problem of robots struggling in unpredictable real-world environments. It learns from a massive dataset of internet videos to understand object motion and physics. This allows the robots to better adapt to changes, like shifting boxes or people moving nearby, compared to current AI training methods like teleoperation. CEO Jagdeep Singh, who previously founded QuantumScape, stated that the online videos provide varied approaches that robots can use to adapt, while teleoperation can cause the model to fail if the phone orientation changes. Rhoda plans to license the FutureVision tech and is also considering building its own hardware to ensure quality.
