# Deepak Pathak

> Deepak Pathak is the co-founder and CEO of Skild AI, the Pittsburgh robotics company building a single general-purpose 'brain' that can run any robot from a quadruped to a humanoid. A Raj Reddy Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon, he earned a gold medal at IIT Kanpur and a PhD at UC Berkeley before betting that physical intelligence, not language, is the real path to AGI. In January 2026 Skild raised $1.4 billion at a valuation north of $14 billion, backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Skild AI; Raj Reddy Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University
- **Organizations:** Skild AI, Carnegie Mellon University, CMU Robotics Institute, CMU Machine Learning Department
- **From:** India
- **Nationality:** Indian
- **Education:** B.Tech, Computer Science & Engineering (Gold Medal), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, PhD, EECS (advised by Alyosha Efros and Trevor Darrell), University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Skild AI, valued at over $14 billion as of January 2026., Raised roughly $2 billion for Skild AI across seed, Series A, B, and C since 2023., Published research showing a single model can operate both a quadruped and a humanoid robot and adapt in real time when limbs are removed.

## Career timeline

- **2014** — Graduates from IIT Kanpur with a Gold Medal and best undergraduate thesis award in Computer Science.
- **2019** — Earns PhD at UC Berkeley, advised by Alyosha Efros and Trevor Darrell; later a visiting scholar with Pieter Abbeel.
- **2019** — Spends a year as a researcher at Facebook (Meta) AI Research, collaborating with Jitendra Malik.
- **2020** — Joins Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science as an Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute.
- **2022** — Receives the Okawa Research Award and IIT Kanpur Young Alumnus Award.
- **2023** — Co-founds Skild AI with CMU colleague Abhinav Gupta; raises a $14.5M seed co-led by Lightspeed and Sequoia.
- **2024** — Skild raises a $300M Series A at a $1.5B valuation; Pathak named MIT Technology Review 35 Under 35 and Raj Reddy Chair at CMU.
- **2025** — Skild raises a Series B around a $4.5B valuation (SoftBank, Nvidia, Samsung); awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship.
- **2026** — Skild raises $1.4B Series C led by SoftBank at a valuation over $14B; receives ONR Young Investigator Award.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Skild AI, valued at over $14 billion as of January 2026.
- Raised roughly $2 billion for Skild AI across seed, Series A, B, and C since 2023.
- Published research showing a single model can operate both a quadruped and a humanoid robot and adapt in real time when limbs are removed.
- MIT Technology Review '35 Innovators Under 35' (2024).
- Sloan Research Fellowship (2025).
- Okawa Research Award (2022) and ONR Young Investigator Award (2026).
- Gold Medal at IIT Kanpur (2014) and best undergraduate thesis award.
- Named Raj Reddy Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon (2024).

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Skild AI raised $1.4 billion in a SoftBank-led Series C, pushing its valuation above $14 billion.
- **2026-01** — At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Pathak argued physical intelligence beats language as the foundation of AGI and predicted desk jobs will automate first.
- **2026** — Received the ONR Young Investigator Award.

## Links

- Website: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dpathak/
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pathak22
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/pathak2206
- GitHub: https://github.com/pathak22

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/deepak-pathak
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-12