Deepak Pathak

Deepak Pathak is the visionary CEO and Co‑Founder of Skild AI. A former professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, he co‑founded Skild AI in 2023 alongside Abhinav Gupta, driven by a shared ambition to bring general-purpose intelligence into the physical world. A gold-medalist graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Pathak earned his accolades for top academic performance in computer science.

He went on to complete a PhD in AI at the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded VisageMap, a facial recognition startup later acquired by FaceFirst. Pathak is also renowned for pioneering “curiosity‑driven” learning in robotics, producing highly cited research (over 4,000 citations by mid‑2024); his academic journey included a stint at Meta’s Facebook AI Research (FAIR).

At Skild AI, Pathak leads the development of the company’s core innovation—the “Skild Brain”, a general-purpose robotics foundation model built to power diverse robotic embodiments across various real-world tasks and environments. He emphasizes the system’s ability to outperform typical robotics models in solving the hardest practical tasks—like climbing stairs or assembling delicate items—under challenging conditions.