Physical Intelligence — Ex-DeepMind Robotics Startup — In Talks for $11B Valuation
Physical Intelligence — the two-year-old robotics AI startup founded by former Google DeepMind researchers and AI academics — is in discussions for a funding round of roughly $1 billion that would value the company above $11 billion, Bloomberg reported Thursday evening. That figure, if confirmed, would make Pi one of the most valuable AI startups in the world just two years after its founding, and would rank it alongside companies with years of product and revenue history.
What makes Pi notable isn't just the valuation — it's the lineage. The company was built by researchers who came directly out of DeepMind's robotics program, and its focus on general-purpose AI for physical robots maps almost directly onto the research directions DeepMind has been pursuing for years. Projects like RT-2 and the Gemini Robotics initiative have laid the technical groundwork; Pi represents one theory of how that research makes it into commercial hardware.
An $11 billion vote of confidence from venture capital sends a clear signal about where the smart money sees the next frontier. The race to embed AI into physical systems — robots, logistics, manufacturing — is accelerating, and DeepMind's talent ecosystem is at the center of it. For anyone watching the Gemini Robotics roadmap, Pi's trajectory is one of the most direct previews of what that future may look like in practice.