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United States Pieter Abbeel is a distinguished professor and director in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics, leading research labs and founding technology companies.
Co-founded Gradescope (2014), an AI-powered platform designed to assist teachers with grading homework and exams.
Co-founded Covariant (2017), a company focused on developing AI for robotic automation in warehouses and factories. Pieter Abbeel served as Co-Founder, President, and Chief Scientist at Covariant from 2017-2024.
Founded Berkeley Open Arms, which licenses the IP on the Blue Robot project from Berkeley, focusing on low-cost, highly capable 7-dof robot arms.
Joined OpenAI in 2016, publishing numerous articles on reinforcement learning, robot learning, and unsupervised learning.
Gradescope, co-founded by Pieter Abbeel, was acquired by TurnItIn in 2018.
Founding Investment Partner at AIX Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in artificial intelligence startups.
Serving as an Amazon Scholar since 2024.
Pieter Abbeel was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1977. He completed his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering at KU Leuven University in 2000. He then pursued his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University, specializing in artificial intelligence and robotics, under the guidance of Andrew Ng, and completed it in 2008. His interest in AI stemmed from its potential to build tools for other disciplines and the fundamental role intelligence plays in human distinction. Following his Ph.D., Abbeel joined UC Berkeley as an assistant professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department. Pieter Abbeel is currently a Professor and the Jim Gray Chair of Engineering at UC Berkeley. He directs the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and co-directs the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. His research covers deep reinforcement learning, deep imitation learning, deep unsupervised learning, transfer learning, meta-learning, and learning to learn. He is also contributing to understanding AI’s societal impact and its application in other scientific and engineering fields. Abbeel has developed educational content taken by over 100,000 students and his Deep RL and Deep Unsupervised Learning materials are recognized resources for AI researchers.
Throughout his career, Pieter Abbeel has founded three companies: Gradescope (2014), which uses AI to assist educators with grading and was acquired by TurnItIn in 2018; Covariant (2017), focused on AI for robotic automation in warehouses and factories; and Berkeley Open Arms, which develops low-cost, capable 7-DoF robot arms. He advises various AI and robotics startups and is a frequent speaker on AI’s future and strategy for C-suite audiences globally. Abbeel has received several awards including the PECASE, NSF-CAREER, ONR-YIP, Darpa-YFA, and TR35. His work has been highlighted in publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, Rolling Stone, Wired, and Tech Review. In 2021, he joined AIX Ventures as an Investment Partner, a venture capital fund dedicated to AI startups.
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