# Chelsea Finn

Co-founder, Physical Intelligence. TIME100 AI 2026, Thinkers. Her robot startup's model assembled and labeled 59 chocolate boxes without interruption; she says her co-founders talk to people while she talks to robots. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/))

- Born: 1992-10-08 ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Finn))
- Education: PhD, Electrical engineering and computer science, UC Berkeley, 2018; BS, Electrical engineering and computer science, MIT ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Finn), [awards.acm.org](https://awards.acm.org/award_winners/finn_7288703))
- Career: Physical Intelligence (Co-founder, 2024 to now); Stanford University (Assistant Professor, 2019 to now); Google (Research Scientist, 2018–2024) ([linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cbfinn), [time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/), [engineering.stanford.edu](https://engineering.stanford.edu/people/chelsea-finn), [awards.acm.org](https://awards.acm.org/award_winners/finn_7288703))
- TIME profile: https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/
- Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/most-influential-people-in-ai/chelsea-finn

- Her 2017 meta-learning paper, which helps neural networks learn new tasks from tiny datasets, has been cited more than 20,000 times. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/))
- Was the first woman to win the C.V. & Daulat Ramamoorthy Distinguished Research Award, in 2016, while still a PhD student. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Finn))
- Her PhD thesis, Learning to Learn with Gradients, won the 2018 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. ([awards.acm.org](https://awards.acm.org/award_winners/finn_7288703))
- In one test her company's robot model assembled and labelled 59 chocolate boxes in a row without interruption. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/))
- Has said she wants to build a robot that can make cereal. ([imbue.com](https://imbue.com/blog/2022-11-03-podcast-episode-21-chelsea-finn))
- On her role at Physical Intelligence: "The other co-founders talk to the people, and I talk to the robots." ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/))