Generalist raises $400M to scale its general-purpose AI models - The Robot Report

Marvelous. Generalist AI Inc. — a name so blandly ambitious it could be the title of a PowerPoint slide — has bagged $400 million from investors who apparently believe that one model to rule all robots is just around the corner. Total funding now stands at over half a billion dollars, which is roughly the GDP of a small country that could actually use functioning robotics. But never mind that: the press release says this cash will "scale its general-purpose AI models for robotics," which is startup-speak for "we haven't figured out the hard bits yet, but here's a big cheque."

The general-purpose promise is the holy grail of robotics: a single AI that can drive a forklift, flip a burger, and perform surgery without requiring three years of retraining. In practice, robotics is a graveyard of overpromises, littered with the carcasses of startups that thought they'd cracked the code. Generalist’s believers are betting their $400 million that this time is different — because the fifth time's the charm, obviously.

And what of the robots themselves? But until a robot can reliably pick up a toaster without destroying it, the word "general" should probably come with an asterisk. Still, $400 million buys a lot of press coverage, and the CEO gets to say "we're solving general intelligence for robots" with a straight face. Which, in this industry, is essentially the product.