Skild AI, Nvidia bring robot brain to Blackwell assembly lines

Skild AI, a startup backed by Nvidia and SoftBank will power robots on Foxconn’s Houston assembly lines where Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU server racks are built, the companies said.

Skild said it will partner with ABB Robotics and Teradyne’s Universal Robots to embed its software and deploy what it calls a general-purpose “brain” across industrial robots.

CEO Deepak Pathak said the model aims to overcome a key limit of current robots that are programmed for single repetitive tasks and require extensive engineering to change.

The announcements come as the US manufacturers announced about US$1.2 trillion in new production investments in 2025 and as Nvidia said last year it plans to produce AI supercomputers in the US.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Skild’s “brain” relies on simulated experience, not just language models

Skild AI’s “brain” is meant to be hardware-agnostic, so it can run on different industrial robots instead of being built for one machine 1.
The founders call their approach “omni-bodied”. They argue many rivals rely on vision-language models (VLMs)’AI systems that connect what they see with what they read or are told’plus limited robot data, which leaves gaps in physical common sense 1.
Skild pre-trains through physically accurate simulations using NVIDIA’s Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab frameworks. It also uses NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models (large AI models used to generate synthetic training data) for synthetic data generation 2.
Training also pulls from internet-scale videos of humans doing tasks, then the system is fine-tuned with real robot data for partners such as ABB Robotics and Teradyne’s Universal Robots 2, 1.

SoftBank’s ABB deal and Skild investment signal a move toward software-led robotics

These moves underline a valuation gap between robotics hardware and the AI software that runs it.
SoftBank agreed in October to buy ABB’s robotics business for about $5.4 billion. The deal is expected to close in mid-to-late 2026 3.
ABB Robotics relies on customer-specific configurations plus integration work, which can pressure margins. One LinkedIn analysis puts ABB margins at about 12%, which is not an official ABB figure 4.
Skild AI was valued at $14 billion after raising $1.4 billion, and it said revenue reached $30 million in 2025 5.
SoftBank’s backing of both points to a plan to combine an industrial robotics business with scalable AI software, which could shift more value toward the intelligence layer 3.