Deal of the Week
So much robotics action this year, from my 2026 predictions (number ten) to the many large rounds we've seen. As I keep saying, I think Berkeley is number one for AI, but we're also number one for robotics, as shown by this week's Deal of the Week.
Generalist raised $400M at a $2B valuation (🦄) to build general-purpose robots that can learn tasks across different environments. Nice work by Andy Andy Zheng, a Berkeley graduate and the company's Chief Scientist.
These robots are looking to push forward the thesis that general-purpose robots can outperform specialized ones. I spoke previously about some of the key questions that need to be answered in the coming years, and I'm reposting them below:
Humanoid vs. Specialized: Will general-purpose humanoids (like Figure and Tesla) reach cost/performance parity with specialized robots?
China vs. USA: Will China's hardware cost advantage and supply chain dominance trump US innovation?
LLM-First vs. Classical: Will LLM-based approaches, or another architecture, ultimately win out?
Cost Curve: Will costs come down to the $15–30K range that could make robots mainstream?
A final thought to leave you with: there's a video from a newsletter favorite, Masa Son (check out our coverage here and here), where he argues that physical AI and robotics will produce the next trillion-dollar company (from the 1:35 mark onward).
He gets a lot of flak for WeWork, but SoftBank now owns roughly 90% of Arm, which is worth $350–400B today and which Masa acquired for $32B. He even tried to sell it to Nvidia before the deal was blocked. SoftBank recently became the largest listed company in Japan.
Is AI to expensive?
Some companies are starting to dial back AI usage budgets after employees went a little wild. As seen by Uber limiting AI spend to $1,500 per person per month (which is still quite a lot!).
So what happens next?
The atomisation of the data pipeline, where for simpler requests you go to open models (currently an area where the Chinese are leading), and for cutting-edge performance you go to the frontier models.
At one point I thought this might negatively impact the frontier labs. I’m no longer convinced. The market may simply go vertical for both.
Some nice charts on this topic in Berkeley alum Scott Galloway’s newsletter
Recursive learning or regulatory capture?
Three things caught my eye this week. Anthropic published an article suggesting they are starting to see the emergence of recursive learning (See my post on continual learning), where AI helps improve AI. OpenAI floated the idea of the US Government owning part of the labs. Google raised raised $80B despite already sitting on more than $100B of cash.
These might seem unrelated, but I think they are connected. If the frontier labs genuinely believe recursive learning is beginning to emerge, then the prize for being in first place becomes enormous. In that world, capital, compute, energy, and government relationships become strategic assets. Raising huge amounts of capital and aligning with governments is not a side effect of the AI race, it becomes the race itself.
The question is whether this is prudent preparation for a world of accelerating AI progress or the early stages of regulatory capture. Perhaps it is a bit of both.
Quick Takes
Startups with $10B+ valuation with over $100M raised - can you spot the Berkeley ones? OpenAI, Waymo, Waymo
Many believe that LLMs will only push inteligence so far and a different paradigm is needed in certain areas - check out World Models.
Valuation guru and NYU professor Aswath Damodaran gives his SpaceX valuation - spoiler it is $1.3T. Unclear if this includes the Google compute deal last week for nearly a $1B a month. Never bet against Elon.
We have been banging the SF is back drum for a while - sadly due to an undersupply of real estate. Rapidly rising rents are following:
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
6 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$458M of capital raised from the 1st June to 7th June
💡 Got any ideas or feedback on how to improve this weekly digest? Just hit reply.
Closed Rounds
🚀 Generalist. $400M Early Stage 🇺🇲 AI engineering technology tools. 💰 Radical Ventures, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures
🩺 BioIntelliSense. $58M 🇺🇲 Remote patient monitoring platform. 💰 Philips Ventures, Syringa Capital, LifeSci Venture Partners
🐻 David Wang, Founder & CEO. BS EECS. Article
🎓 Changemaker Edu. $0.05M Equity Crowdfunding 🇺🇲 Micro-school education platform. 💰 Undisclosed
🐻 David Richards, Founder & CEO. BA History. Article
🍪 Foundation AGI Undisclosed 🇺🇲 AI Engineering Platform 💰 E14 Fund, RRE Ventures, Samsung NEXT Ventures
🐻 Wojciech Mucha, Founder & CEO. BS.
⚡ Kabisa. Undisclosed 🇷🇼 Electric mobility platform. 💰 Adapt Nature Capital, Norrsken,
🐻 Nick Hu, Co-Founder. BA Interdisciplinary Studies.
🛠️ Samepage. Undisclosed 🇺🇲 Team collaboration software. 💰 Undisclosed
🐻 Sahil Jain,Co-Founder & CEO. BA Economics.
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 763 | 212,775 |
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Built By Berkeley, where we announce all the funding rounds by Berkeley-founded companies. This is a community effort, so please let us know if we missed a company here. 🐻
