ABAB News Logo
Back to Flash News

Physical Intelligence in talks to raise at least $1 billion, valuation could rise to about $20 billion

According to people familiar with the matter who told Bloomberg, robotics AI software developer Physical Intelligence is in talks to raise at least $1 billion in new funding, with its valuation set to nearly double to about $20 billion. Existing investors Avenir and Lux Capital are in talks to lead the round.

The company completed financing earlier this year at a valuation of about $11.5 billion. The people familiar with the matter said Physical Intelligence currently has no revenue. Founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers and scholars from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, the company’s existing investors include Alphabet-owned CapitalG, Jeff Bezos and Thrive Capital.

Physical Intelligence develops AI software that can run on a variety of third-party hardware and support multiple robot actions. On October 13, the company opened beta access to its latest robot model’s Pi API and fine-tuning permissions to outside developers, allowing them to upload data, fine-tune the model and deploy cloud inference; it is still in the testing stage. Recent job postings from the company show that employees will train robots to complete tasks such as everyday household chores.

Original sources:

  1. Title: Robotics Lab Physical Intelligence in Talks for a $20 Billion Valuation Publisher: Bloomberg Publication date: 2026-10-27 URL：https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-27/robotics-lab-physical-intelligence-in-talks-for-a-20-billion-valuation Source nature: media report Verification: Only the visible portions of this page were read this time (Takeaways and summary paragraphs); the full text could not be read due to the paywall; verification date: 2026-10-27. Related details were cross-checked against Investing.com/Yahoo paraphrases of the Bloomberg report. Supported content: in talks to raise at least $1 billion, valuation of about $20 billion, Avenir and Lux Capital in talks to lead, valued at about $11.5 billion earlier this year, currently no revenue.

  2. Title: Physical Intelligence in talks to raise $1B at $20B valuation - Bloomberg Publisher: Investing.com (paraphrasing Bloomberg) Publication date: 2026-10-27 URL：https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/physical-intelligence-talks-raise-1b-202852726.html Source nature: media report (secondary paraphrase) Verification: The full visible content on this page was read this time; verification date: 2026-10-27. Supported content: early-stage talks, at least $1 billion, valuation of about $20 billion, Avenir and Lux Capital, previous valuation of $11.5 billion, no revenue, CapitalG/Thrive/Bezos as investors, founded in 2024 background, hardware-agnostic software, model beta opened this month.

  3. Title: Frontier Models for Every Robot / Physical Intelligence (π) Publisher: Physical Intelligence (company website) Publication date: 2026-10-13 (Pi API beta announcement) URL：https://www.pi.website/ Source nature: official announcement Verification: The relevant pages on the official website were read this time; verification date: 2026-10-27. Supported content: on October 13, the latest model Pi API beta was opened, supporting outside developers in uploading data, fine-tuning, and deploying cloud inference.

  4. Title: Robotics Startup Physical Intelligence Valued at $5.6 Billion in New Funding Publisher: Bloomberg Publication date: 2025-11-20 URL：https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-20/robotics-startup-physical-intelligence-valued-at-5-6-billion-in-new-funding Source nature: media report Verification: Only the visible portions of this page were read this time; verification date: 2026-10-27. Supported content: $600 million raised in November 2025, valuation of $5.6 billion, CapitalG led, Lux Capital/Thrive Capital/Jeff Bezos participated (historical background, does not prove the current financing has been completed).

  5. Title: AI Robotics Lab in Talks to Raise $1 Billion at $11 Billion Valuation Publisher: Bloomberg Publication date: 2026-03-27 URL：https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-27/ex-deepmind-staffers-robotics-startup-in-talks-for-11-billion-valuation Source nature: media report Verification: Only the visible portions of this page were read this time; verification date: 2026-10-27. Supported content: in March 2026 there were talks for about $1 billion and a valuation above $11 billion (historical talks record).

ABAB AI Insight

The core founding team of Physical Intelligence comes from Google DeepMind and top university robotics and machine learning labs. CEO Karol Hausman previously worked at Google DeepMind on robotics learning and foundation models, and also taught at Stanford; Sergey Levine is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and has long focused on robot reinforcement learning and imitation learning; Chelsea Finn is a professor at Stanford University whose doctoral thesis won the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award and whose research centers on few-shot learning; Brian Ichter and Quan Vuong also came from Google and were involved in early work on vision-language-action models such as RT-2. After the team came together in 2024, it quickly attracted investment from institutions and individuals including CapitalG, Bezos, Thrive Capital and OpenAI, creating a concentration of research capability and capital resources.

On the capital side, the company completed a $600 million financing led by CapitalG in November 2025 at a valuation of $5.6 billion; in March 2026 it also reportedly held talks for a round of about $1 billion at a valuation above $11 billion. This latest talk for at least $1 billion and a target valuation of about $20 billion represents a rapid upward adjustment on top of an already high valuation base. The funds will mainly be used for model training and computing resources. The company currently has no revenue, and its model still relies on venture capital to support research and early products such as the Pi series models and the API. Opening the Pi API beta is a step from pure research toward a developer ecosystem, but it has not yet formed scaled paid services or customer revenue.

Compared with peer company Skild AI, which also develops cross-hardware robotics foundation models (Skild Brain), Skild AI disclosed to Bloomberg in September 2026 that it had reached an annualized revenue run rate of $100 million after completing a $1.4 billion financing at an estimated valuation of $14 billion in January 2026, about 10 months after its first commercial deployment. Physical Intelligence still has no revenue, yet its valuation target is close to $20 billion, higher than Skild AI’s level after it had already generated revenue. The two companies follow similar paths (software layer rather than self-produced hardware), but their commercialization progress differs significantly: Skild has already entered multi-customer deployment, while Physical Intelligence remains focused on research and beta.

If this round is completed, Physical Intelligence will further strengthen its capital and computing resources as an independent provider of robotics foundation models, which may improve its appeal to and bargaining power with third-party hardware manufacturers. However, with no revenue yet, the rapid doubling of valuation also means that future actual deployment and customer adoption will be needed to support it; otherwise, compared with competitors that have already generated revenue, pressure on capital efficiency and sustainability will become more pronounced. Opening the API helps accumulate real-world data, but turning that into stable, chargeable revenue still depends on specific customer conversion and pricing mechanisms.

ABAB News · Cognitive Law

  1. A robotics foundation model company with no revenue can, driven by capital, push its valuation above that of competitors that already have revenue.

  2. Opening an API at the software layer does not mean a customer funnel that can already be monetized at scale has been formed.

  3. From a research lab to an independent company, capital density can rise quickly, but the pace of commercialization determines whether the valuation can be sustained later.