Cameron told the Financial Times that Odyssey can capture physics, body language and other elements beyond large language models\u2019 reach.<\/p>\n
He added in an overnight post: \u201cWe believed general world models – systems that understand and simulate the world – would become a new class of foundation model, ultimately revolutionising robotics, science, healthcare, education, gaming, defence and many other industries.\u201d <\/p>\n
An Odyssey video, below, also promises the firm\u2019s technology, \u201cwill enable applications straight out of sci-fi\u201d.<\/p>\n
The raise was led by US private equity firm Natural Capital, with support from Amazon, AMD\u2019s venture arm, the CIA\u2019s venture wing, In-Q-Tel, Google Ventures and a slate of VC firms including New Zealand\u2019s Icehouse Ventures.<\/p>\n
For Amazon, Odyssey\u2019s physical world simulation software is a chance to extend the reach of its in-house-designed Trainium chip.<\/p>\n
Amazon wasn\u2019t alone with this angle. <\/p>\n
Its investment in the 55-person Odyssey came just four months after a Series A round. Backers have included OpenAI and chip maker Nvidia.<\/p>\n
But Jeff Bezos\u2019 firm has the inside running.<\/p>\n
Cameron posted this morning that as part of the fundraising deal, \u201cAmazon Web Services will become our preferred cloud provider and Odyssey is collaborating with Amazon\u2019s Annapurna Labs [in Austin, Texas] to optimise our world models on AWS Trainium chips, working closely together on research and go-to-market efforts\u201d.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: Inside Amazon\u2019s Annapurna AI chip lab – could it overtake Nvidia?<\/a><\/p>\n It will certainly give Trainium and AWS a workout. \u201cWorld models represent one of the most demanding workloads in AI,\u201d Amazon vice-president Ron Diamant said. <\/p>\n Hawke graduated from Auckland University in 2009 with degrees in computer science and mechatronics engineering. <\/p>\n After completing a doctorate in Applied AI at Oxford, in 2018 he became the founding research engineer for London-based Wayve, founded by fellow Kiwi Alex Kendall (recently in the news after raising US$1.5 billion for its robotaxi technology<\/a>, which will be first deployed by one of its major investors, Uber).<\/p>\n In 2023, Hawke quit Wayve to co-found a \u201cstealth project\u201d with Cameron, described by the Times as “a university dropout who learned to code as a child”.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of AI companies are building tools on top of the big models, but Odyssey is building one of those models for the physical world, which is a completely different level of ambition,\u201d Icehouse Ventures partner Mason Bleakely said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe easiest way to think about it is that OpenAI built models that help computers understand language, while Odyssey is building models that help computers understand the physical world. If they get it right, that becomes core infrastructure for robotics, autonomy, gaming and any industry that needs to simulate real environments.<\/p>\n \u201cFor New Zealand, the exciting thing is that we have a founder in the race and New Zealand capital behind him. If world models are going to shape the next decade of AI, then we want New Zealanders building at that level.\u201d<\/p>\n Including the Series B round announced overnight, Odyssey has raised a total US$377m. The latest funds will go toward its push to further develop and ultimately commercialise its product.<\/p>\n Other Kiwi expats making waves in AI include Dave Ferguson, the San Francisco-based co-founder of autonomous driving start-up, Nuro, which last August raised US$203m at a US$6b valuation<\/a> from backers including Nvidia (Icehouse again got its foot in the door, chipping in $5m).<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the Christchurch-raised, now Singapore-based Paul Copplestone, co-founder of Supabase – which this month raised US$500m at a US$10b valuation<\/a> for its technology that helps enable \u201cvibe coding\u201d.<\/p>\n Those in the cheaper seats include Adrian Macneil, the former Treasury software developer, now relocated to Silicon Valley, who recently raised $40m<\/a> at an undisclosed valuation for his physical world AI start-up Foxglove, Harry Mellsop, whose early stage firm Antioch, which operates in a similar field and recently raised $15m<\/a> at a $102m<\/a> valuation<\/a> and Nic Lane, co-founder of UK AI-training start-up Flower Lab, which raised US$20m at a US$100m valuation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameron told the Financial Times that Odyssey can capture physics, body language and other elements beyond large language…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[242506,365,414,24744,363,364,113013,1288,93775,2082,311,242505,8482,90907,8454,11540,194,700,111,139,69,189496,2515,50435,1037,145,12806,14301,102],"class_list":["post-482875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-529m","tag-ai","tag-amazon","tag-amount","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-backers","tag-capital","tag-expat","tag-for","tag-founder","tag-hawke","tag-huge","tag-icehouse","tag-including","tag-jeff","tag-kiwi","tag-latest","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-odyssey","tag-raise","tag-secures","tag-startup","tag-technology","tag-venture","tag-ventures","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}