{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-25-skild-ai-s1/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-25-skild-ai-s1/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-08-25-skild-ai-s1","date":"2026-08-25","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Skild AI's S1 learns 10-minute robot tasks from a single video prompt","deck":null,"takeaway":null,"category":"robotics","category_label":"Robotics","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Skild AI: Introducing S1 — In-Context Learning for Robotics","url":"https://www.skild.ai/blogs/s1","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"skild.ai"},{"n":2,"title":"Skild AI on X: Introducing S1","url":"https://x.com/SkildAI/status/2092300842900865389","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.com"},{"n":3,"title":"The Robot Report: Skild AI unveils S1","url":"https://www.therobotreport.com/skild-ai-unveils-s1-flagship-robot-foundation-model/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"therobotreport.com"},{"n":4,"title":"NVIDIA blog: Skild AI taps NVIDIA physical AI to teach robots from a single video","url":"https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/skild-ai-s1-physical-ai/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"blogs.nvidia.com"}],"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Skild AI"],"title":"Skild AI's S1 learns 10-minute robot tasks from a single video prompt","summary":"Skild AI unveiled S1 on 2026-08-25, a robot foundation model that performs unseen long-horizon tasks (up to ~10 minutes, e.g. pancakes, pour-over coffee, potting a plant) from one video demonstration with no fine-tuning, reaching 66% success on unseen tasks vs 9% for a language-prompted policy.","key_facts":["In-context learning from one video; tasks up to ~10 minutes and dozens of steps never seen in pretraining","Success: 96% seen tasks, 66% unseen tasks vs 9% for language-prompting (~7x)","One demo video ≈ 380 post-training episodes; 11 minutes from demo to autonomous execution (plant potting)","Trained on teleop, human video, simulation and data-capture gloves; runs on arms, humanoids and quadrupeds","NVIDIA (2026-09-10): Skild at $100M revenue run rate 10 months after first deployment; 60+ deployment partnerships"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["foundation-model","in-context-learning","human-video","vla"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nS1 treats a human demonstration video as the prompt, the way an LLM takes an example in context. Skild says it is the first robotics foundation model to show in-context learning on extremely long-horizon tasks unseen in pretraining. S1 is in use with commercial partners; there is no public API. Skild also acquired Fetch Robotics assets (Zebra's robotics division, 2026-04-15; see 2026-04-15-skild-ai-acquires-zebra-fetch-robotics) to speed up deployment.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nAlong with Generalist GEN-1.5 six days earlier, S1 marks the arrival of prompt-by-demonstration in robotics, a possible \"GPT-3 moment\" where adding a skill no longer needs a new training run. Results are company-reported.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-09-17-figure-helix-2-5","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-17-figure-helix-2-5/","date":"2026-09-17","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Figure Helix 2.5: humanoids do chores zero-shot in 30 never-seen homes","deck":null,"takeaway":"This is among the strongest public evidence that robot foundation models scale with human video, and that humanoids can generalize to unseen real homes — a core prerequisite for home robots.","category":"robotics","category_label":"Robotics","importance":5,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Figure AI"]},{"id":"2026-08-19-generalist-gen-1-5","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-19-generalist-gen-1-5/","date":"2026-08-19","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Generalist GEN-1.5 learns dexterous robot tasks from one demonstration","deck":null,"takeaway":"Along with Skild S1 six days later, it signals that in-context learning from demonstrations, a key LLM property, is emerging in robot foundation models.","category":"robotics","category_label":"Robotics","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Generalist AI"]},{"id":"2026-04-15-skild-ai-acquires-zebra-fetch-robotics","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-04-15-skild-ai-acquires-zebra-fetch-robotics/","date":"2026-04-15","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Skild AI acquires Zebra Technologies' robotics division (formerly Fetch Robotics) to put its robot brain in warehouses","deck":null,"takeaway":"Robot-foundation-model startups need real deployments for data and revenue.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":2,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Skild AI","Zebra Technologies"]},{"id":"2026-01-14-skild-ai-series-c","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-01-14-skild-ai-series-c/","date":"2026-01-14","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Skild AI raises $1.4B at $14B+ valuation for its 'omni-bodied' Skild Brain","deck":null,"takeaway":"It shows investors paying frontier-lab-style valuations for a robot \"brain\" company that does not build its own hardware.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Skild AI","SoftBank","NVIDIA"]}],"people":[],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[{"id":"skild-s1","name":"Skild S1 (Skild Brain)","url":"https://postcutoff.com/m/skild-s1/"}],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"edit","text":"Linked the Zebra/Fetch acquisition entry"},{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-04"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":117,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":56,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":147,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":86,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":"https://postcutoff.com/s/skild-ai-s1-learns"}