Generalist
Generalist builds foundation models for robot manipulation.
- Category
- Deep Tech
- Website
- generalistai.com
What Generalist does
Generalist trains a single model to drive many different kinds of robot hands rather than writing separate control software for each machine, aiming at general-purpose robots that bring down the cost of physical labor. Pete Florence, Andy Zeng and Andrew Barry left Google DeepMind and Boston Dynamics to found the company in 2024.
The secret
Manipulation generalises across hardware. One model that drives many kinds of robot hands means every hour of data collected on any machine improves every machine, which is a different growth curve from writing control software per robot.
Why NZVC invested in Generalist
NZVC invested in Generalist. We file the company under Deep Tech on the portfolio wall.
We backed Generalist because robotics has been held back by software written one machine at a time, and a single model that drives many kinds of robot hands changes what a new robot costs to bring into service. Pete Florence, Andy Zeng and Andrew Barry came out of Google DeepMind and Boston Dynamics, which is about as direct a line to the state of the art in manipulation as exists. Bringing down the cost of physical labor is a very large prize, and this team is going at the general case rather than one narrow task.
