Brian Ichter

He earned a BS in aerospace engineering and a BA in physics from the University of Virginia in 2012 and an MS in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry in 2015, and pursued a PhD in Marco Pavone’s Autonomous Systems Lab on sampling-based algorithms for robotic motion planning.⁠[1]

In September 2017 he posted “Learning Sampling Distributions for Robot Motion Planning” as first author with James Harrison and Marco Pavone.⁠[2]

He held NDSEG, NSF Graduate Research and NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry Space Technology Research fellowships.⁠[1]

In April 2022 he was one of 45 authors of the robotics paper “Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances” (SayCan) and submitted it to arXiv; the authors are listed alphabetically.⁠[3]

The SayCan project was presented under the Robotics at Google and Everyday Robots names.⁠[4]

In August 2022 he submitted a revised version of the SayCan paper to arXiv, adding results with PaLM.⁠[3]

That month he and Karol HausmanKarol HausmanKarol Hausman is a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher who co-founded Physical Intelligence, a robot foundation-model company, and serves as its chief executive. He previously worked on robot learning at Google Brain and Google DeepMind and is an adjunct professor at Stanford University.Open the full entry, research scientists on the Google Research Brain Team, co-wrote a post introducing SayCan.⁠[5]

In July 2023 he was one of 54 authors of the RT-2 paper and its arXiv submitter.⁠[6]

Physical Intelligence was founded in 2024 to build a foundation model for robotics; its seven-person founding team is Adnan Esmail, Chelsea FinnChelsea FinnChelsea Finn is a computer scientist and robot-learning researcher who is an assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University and a co-founder of the robotics AI company Physical Intelligence. Known for work on meta-learning and robot learning, she won the 2018 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award and was named to the TIME100 AI list in 2026.Open the full entry, Lachy Groom, Karol Hausman, Brian Ichter, Sergey LevineSergey LevineSergey Levine is a computer scientist and associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley who works on deep reinforcement learning and robot learning, co-developed algorithms such as Soft Actor-Critic and Conservative Q-Learning, and in 2024 co-founded the robot foundation model company Physical Intelligence.Open the full entry and Quan VuongQuan VuongQuan Vuong is a robot learning researcher and one of the co-founders of Physical Intelligence, a robotics foundation model company. He previously did robotics research at Google, contributed to the development of robotics transformer models including RT-1 and RT-2, and, with Pannag Sanketi, published under their bylines the cross-robot dataset Open X-Embodiment.Open the full entry.⁠[7]

He describes himself as a former research scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Brain who now works on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world.”⁠[8]

Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry backed the company in 2024, with partner Alfred LinAlfred LinAlfred Lin is an American venture capitalist who has been a partner at Sequoia Capital since 2010 and, since November 2025, one of the firm’s co-stewards together with Pat Grady. Before joining Sequoia he was an executive at LinkExchange, Tellme Networks, and Zappos, companies acquired by Microsoft and Amazon; at Sequoia he has represented the firm on the boards of companies including Airbnb and DoorDash.Open the full entry.⁠[9]

Redpoint Ventures invested in the company’s Series A in 2024.⁠[10]

The company raised a $70 million seed round led by Thrive Capital in March 2024 and $400 million that November at about $2.4 billion post-money.⁠[11]

In October 2024 he was one of the 24 authors of the paper on π0, the company’s first generalist robot policy.⁠[12]

In November 2025 Physical Intelligence raised a $600 million Series B co-led by CapitalG and Lux CapitalLux CapitalLux Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Josh Wolfe and Robert Paull, with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Focused on emerging science and technology, the firm backs companies in fields including life sciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace and defense through fund investments and by helping to found companies.Open the full entry, bringing its total to about $1.1 billion, at a valuation of about $5.6 billion.⁠[13]