Built By Berkeley

Deal of the Week:

In our 2025 wrap, our number 10 prediction was that 2026 would be another massive year for robotics. That seems to be off to the races with this $1.4B monster round (cool video of the product!) for Berkeley robotics company Skild AI at a $14B valuation. The big bucks!

A couple of weeks ago we broke down some of the questions that will be answered over the next few years in robotics—worth a read. With this round and many others, it's safe to say, in the words of Jacobim Mugatu: "It’s that damn Hansel [Robotics]! He’s so hot right now!"

Skild is building the inteligence model for robotics, think making them better at packing, manipulation etc. The over arching vision is ‘One brain, Any Robot’ Congrats to Deepak Pathak and team!

I did a presentation back in April 2025 around Berkeley AI and Berkeley PhD founders, and it seems that Skild AI and Physical Intelligence are well on the way to becoming iconic Berkeley PhD-started companies.

Note: It seems EvolutionaryScale was acu-hired by a Zuckerberg family backed lab.

Trouble at a Neo Lab?

We mentioned that Berkeley-founded Thinking Machines was looking to raise at a $50B valuation (after a $2B seed round last year). That now looks a little harder, with three senior employees (two of them co-founders) jumping ship to OpenAI. A couple even announced their resignations via Slack. Another example of the zeitgist moving at warp speed in AI?

One small thought: when Thinking Machines was founded, The Information reported that employees were given stock options at zero value, exercisable before the $2B raise at a $10B valuation. If so, this feels like a setup for misaligned incentives. Once equity is vested, and OpenAI or Meta come knocking with a fresh package, wouldn’t you just double-dip? Show me an incentive and I will show you an outcome.

No comment on Thinking Machines viability, but 2026 might need to be the year that these lavishly funded neolabs need to show traction? Will the rubber hit the road or do these remain an expensive call option on AGI for VCs?!

Quick Takes:

• Sequoia’s take on the idea that we have reached AGI—good read, and it links back to the step change people are seeing since Opus 4.5 was launched by Anthropic. See also the CEO of Cursor explaining how they were able to recreate a browser and three million lines of code in a week, autonomously and more context here.

• If anyone is excited (and nervous) for the stock market this week, this was an interesting read. 

• Ryanair is a low-cost European airline with a great marketing team that has managed to get into a fight with Elon Musk, who now wants to buy it and put a Ryan in charge.

Note: We have been informed that the fundraising amount for Oishii was inaccurate. So apologies for misstating this in a previous issue.

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 10 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $1.6B of capital raised from the 12th Jan to 18th Jan

💡 Got any ideas or feedback on how to improve this weekly digest? Just hit reply.

Closed Rounds

🤖 Skild. $1.4B Series C 🇺🇸 Robotics foundation AI. 💰 SoftBank, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital

🐻 Deepak Pathak, Co-Founder & CEO. PhD AI. Article

🎧 Listen Labs. $69.0M Series B 🇺🇸 AI customer interviews. 💰 Conviction Partners, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital

🐻 Alfred Wahlforss, Founder & CEO. Economics & Environmental Science Article

🔬 LIS Technologies. $63.0M Series A 🇺🇸 Laser isotope separation. 💰 28 Ventures, Innovating Capital, Minetta Brook Capital

🐻 Viktor Chikan, Founder & CTO. PhD Physical Chemistry Article

🛡️ Depthfirst. $40.0M Series A 🇺🇸 Security intelligence layer. 💰 Alt Capital, Accel, Mantis Venture Capital

🐻 Daniele Perito, Co-Founder. Post-Doc Article

🧬 Juvena Therapeutics. $33.5M Series B 🇺🇸 Protein therapeutics discovery. 💰 Felicis, Global Founders Capital, Mubadala Capital

🐻 Hanadie Yousef, Founder. PhD Stem Biology Article

🧪 Vivere Oncotherapies. $10.0M Series B 🇺🇸 Gene delivery immunotherapy. 💰 Berkeley Frontier Fund, California Innovation Fund, Freeflow Ventures

🐻 Melissa Kotterman, Founder & CEO. PhD Chemical & Bio Engineering Article

📊 Noise Labs. $7.1M Seed 🇺🇸 Narrative trading markets. 💰 Paradigm, GSR

🐻 David Zhou, Co-Founder. BA Economics Article

🧠 Allos AI. $5.0M Seed 🇬🇧 Autoimmune drug AI. 💰 AppWorks, Berkeley SkyDeck

🐻 Aditya Varna Iyer, CEO & Co-Founder. Article

📺 Swerve TV. $2.5M Series A 🇺🇸 Free sports streaming. 💰 Scott Galloway

🐻 Steve Shannon, Co-Founder & CEO. Haas MBA Article

🥗 Chopt Creative Salad Company. $8.1M PE Growth 🇺🇸 Fast-casual salads. 💰 L Catterton, Silas Capital

🐻 Leo Kremer, Co-Founder. BA Psychology Article

Our goal is to document the startup ecosystem of Berkeley-founded companies. Please share this newsletter with any Cal Bears in your network so we can crowdsource information about all investment rounds and job opportunities.

• Did we miss a company or want to announce a round? Add it here, and we will post it next week.

• Do you have a job you want to post from a Berkeley Company? Add here.

• Is there someone in the Berkeley ecosystem that you would want us to do a profile on? A founder, funder, or general startup person? Add here.

Built By Berkeley is not affiliated with UC Berkeley, but maybe we will be one day if we get enough subscribers….

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. 🐻