General Intuition, the New York-based startup building a foundation model that trains AI agents how to move through space and time, is in talks to raise around $300 million, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The raise comes eight months after General Intuition spun out of Medal<\/a>, a platform for uploading and sharing video game clips, with a $134 million seed round. The fresh funds would bring the startup\u2019s valuation up to just over $2 billion, sources say.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sources tell TechCrunch General Intuition has secured funds from backers, including Jeff Bezos<\/a> and Eric Schmidt, as well as existing investors Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pim de Witte, who co-founded Medal, founded and leads General Intuition alongside co-founders Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley, and Vincent Micheli \u2014 researchers who bring expertise in world modeling and simulation. <\/p>\n The startup trains embodied AI and world models using Medal\u2019s dataset of 2 billion videos per year from 10 million monthly active users. The startup\u2019s pitch is that such a dataset \u2014 unique because it allows AI to learn from interactive, first-person gameplay \u2014 is the perfect base to teach machines deep spatial-temporal reasoning, allowing them to perceive, anticipate, and interact in real time in simulation.<\/p>\n That dataset has reportedly<\/a> attracted the attention of OpenAI, which previously attempted to acquire Medal. And sources say OpenAI hasn\u2019t been the only big AI lab to come knocking.\u00a0<\/p>\n The world model space that General Intuition is playing in is heating up. Startups like Runway<\/a>, Decart<\/a>, and World Labs<\/a> have all recently released world models, and Google\u2019s Genie 3 recently began integrating Google Maps data<\/a> for more real-world simulation capabilities.<\/p>\n All of these companies see gaming and robotics training as near-term commercial use cases, but General Intuition takes a different approach: It builds world models to train agents, not to sell them. The agents are the product, and the startup\u2019s unique dataset gives it a path to viability.<\/p>\n General Intuition will use the funds to scale up its compute capacity so it can release a new product by the end of summer or early fall, according to a source familiar with the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n