XDOF, simply three months out of stealth, is in talks for a Sequence B at a $1.2B valuation

Lower than three months after rising from stealth, XDOF, a startup that collects real-world teleoperation information for coaching general-purpose robots, is in late-stage talks to lift a Sequence B at a valuation of about $1.2 billion valuation led by 8VC, a number of folks with data of the deal mentioned.

XDOF was co-founded by UC Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu (CEO) and Fred Shentu (CTO) in 2024. TechCrunch reported on the startup’s $70 million Series A in June, with participation from Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital. XDOF wasn’t planning to lift once more so quickly after that spherical. However the firm’s speedy progress — with annualized income approaching $50 million — prompted VCs to strategy it a couple of new spherical, the folks mentioned.

TechCrunch was unable to study the full capital being raised or whether or not the valuation consists of the brand new funding. The phrases of the deal usually are not closing and will nonetheless change.

XDOF and 8VC didn’t reply to our request for remark.

The startup goals to construct the info pipelines, assortment instruments, and annotation techniques that frontier AI labs and robotics corporations can’t simply construct themselves, basically performing as an outsourced data-supply chain for the robotics business.

As a PhD scholar, Wu was finding out how robots study from massive datasets. One huge obstacle to his analysis was the shortage of “large-scale information to work with,” he advised TechCrunch in June.

So he teamed up with Shentu on a challenge referred to as GELLO, a low-cost teleoperation system that enables a human operator to manage a robotic arm remotely so as to generate coaching information. Their work led to an influential paper in robotics.

That analysis shaped the inspiration for XDOF, which buyers now describe because the Scale AI or Mercor for bodily robotics, a reference to the data-labeling giants that helped gasoline the AI increase. Not like LLMs, which initially skilled on the whole thing of the web, bodily robots don’t have an equal real-world dataset to attract from, making information assortment a crucial bottleneck to constructing general-purpose machines.

XDOF is partnering with UC Berkeley’s AI Analysis lab to launch what it believes is the biggest assortment of high-quality robotic coaching information ever assembled, dubbed ABC. 

To seize this information, XDOF combines distant robotic teleoperation with human collectors who put on sensors to document on a regular basis duties like folding garments and flattening packing containers.

The startup plans to rent and prepare groups of knowledge collectors worldwide, together with teleoperators who steer robots remotely and selfish operators who put on physique sensors to seize motion information.  

XDOF beforehand advised TechCrunch that it’s already working with 20 prospects, together with a number of frontier AI labs.

Different startups trying to gather real-world information for robotic coaching embrace Mecka AI, in addition to human-data platforms increasing past LLMs, corresponding to Scale AI and Micro1.