XDOF discusses series b funding at 1.2 billion dollar valuation

Less than three months after emerging from stealth, robotics data startup XDOF is in late-stage talks to raise a Series B round at a valuation of approximately $1.2 billion. The investment is reportedly being led by 8VC, though terms remain unfinalized and subject to change.

Founded in 2024 by UC Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu and Fred Shentu, the company builds data pipelines, collection tools, and annotation systems for general-purpose robotics. The startup previously secured a $70 million Series A in June with participation from Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital. Although an immediate funding round was not initially planned, annualized revenue approaching $50 million prompted renewed investor interest.

Addressing the robotics data bottleneck

Unlike large language models that draw from vast internet archives, physical robots lack an equivalent pre-existing dataset. This reality creates a critical bottleneck for building general-purpose machines. Wu and Shentu initially encountered this limitation during academic research, leading them to develop GELLO, a low-cost teleoperation system that enables human operators to remotely control robotic arms to generate training data.

Today, XDOF functions as an outsourced data-supply chain for the robotics sector. To capture necessary movements, the company combines remote teleoperation with human collectors who wear body sensors to record everyday tasks such as folding clothes and flattening boxes. The startup plans to expand this workforce globally, hiring both remote robot operators and egocentric data collectors.

Research collaboration and future outlook

In tandem with its commercial growth, XDOF is partnering with the UC Berkeley AI Research lab to release what it describes as the largest collection of high-quality robot training data assembled to date, titled ABC. The company currently counts around 20 customers, including several frontier AI laboratories.

As the physical AI landscape matures, XDOF joins other platforms attempting to solve the robotics data challenge, operating alongside established human-data providers expanding their scope beyond traditional language models.