Research labs

Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute (Pathak Research Group)

United States

Skild AI, a 2023 CMU spin-off co-founded by Pathak and Gupta, raised a $1.4B Series C led by SoftBank in January 2026 at a valuation above $14B to build a general-purpose robot foundation model.

Updated 2026-07-10 · Last verified 2026-07-10

AffiliationCarnegie Mellon University
CountryUS
TypeAcademic
Research areasdexterous manipulation, legged locomotion, humanoid learning, foundation models
Flagship contributionDeveloped RMA (Rapid Motor Adaptation), an algorithm trained entirely in simulation and deployed without fine-tuning on a real A1 quadruped robot for real-time terrain adaptation.
Key peopleDeepak Pathak (Assistant Professor, Robotics Institute ; CEO de Skild AI), Abhinav Gupta (Professor, Robotics Institute ; co-fondateur et président de Skild AI), David Held (Associate Professor), Katerina Fragkiadaki (Associate Professor)
Open outputsCode de RMA et travaux dérivés publiés en open source (GitHub) ; publications RSS/CoRL en accès arXiv.
CityPittsburgh

Sources : CMU Robotics Institute (2026-07)arXiv (RSS 2021) (2021-07)The Robot Report (2026-01)

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Christian Verbrugge

Christian Verbrugge · D·Fairy

Bringing a physical AI solution into European industry?

15 years at KUKA on automotive OEM programs (€100M), now focused on edge AI and autonomous agents. I support robotics and embodied AI companies on their EMEA market entry: OEM and Tier 1 access, co-funded pilots, AI Act readiness.

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