What happened
Dream Labs raised $90 million in seed funding led by B Capital and Kindred Ventures and launched Dream API, a publicly available interface that converts camera feeds and plain-English instructions into motor commands for unfamiliar robots.
Why it matters
The API lets developers connect any robot with grippers and have it carry out tasks without task-specific training, potentially cutting the months specialists spend teaching a single robot one task.
WHO IT HITSRobot developers and hardware makers gain a way to add usable intelligence to low-cost arms via an API, while the funding supports compute scaling for Dream Labs.
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Dream Labs' launch comes as factories worldwide run a record 5 million industrial robots, yet nearly every one is programmed for a single task and most cannot transfer what they have learned to other machines. Low-cost robots now sell for a few thousand dollars but ship with no built-in intelligence, and teaching one robot one task can take specialists months, according to the startup.
The company said its Dream-1 flagship model is trained on video of people performing everyday tasks and can predict what will happen next and determine the robot's resulting action. Because it learns from video rather than from a single machine, its capabilities transfer across hardware, Dream Labs claimed. Dream-1 currently handles tabletop tasks such as picking and placing objects and folding laundry, with support for wheeled mobile robots and dexterous hands to follow.
Dream Labs supports robots today that cost between about $2,000 and $10,000 and works with more than 20 hardware partners, refining the model for each robot beyond the baseline. The company said it plans to use the new funding primarily for compute as it expands the tasks and robots Dream-1 can handle, and scales to support more users.
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