World Model Startups

22 Companies 5 Categories

This landscape covers "world models" a.k.a startups building learned representations of real or virtual systems that can predict how they evolve, ideally in response to actions. It excludes products that simulate or generate environments without learning their underlying dynamics.

Filter and ordering

Category

General & Spatial Worlds

9 companies

Models designed to understand and generate interactive environments that are not limited to one industry or physical system.

AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence)

amilabs.xyz

AMI Labs is a frontier AI research lab building world models and other AI systems that can understand the real world, maintain persistent memory, reason and plan, and remain controllable and safe.

11-50 employees Employees Seed Stage 2026 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

World Labs

worldlabs.ai

A frontier AI research and product company building spatial intelligence world models that can perceive, generate, reason about, and interact with 3D environments, including its Marble product for creating persistent 3D worlds from text, images, or video. ([worldlabs.ai](https://www.worldlabs.ai/about))

11-50 employees Employees Series C Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

Odyssey

odyssey.ml

Odyssey is an AI lab building general-purpose world models that understand, simulate, and generate interactive worlds in real time.

11-50 employees Employees Series B Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

Decart

decart.ai

Decart is a live AI lab that builds infrastructure and models for real-time, interactive AI experiences, including world models, live video transformation, and playable AI-generated environments. ([decart.ai](https://decart.ai/about))

51-200 employees Employees Series C Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

General Intuition

generalintuition.com

General Intuition is an AI research lab building world models and action models that learn from gameplay data to perceive, predict, and act in virtual and physical environments.

11-50 employees Employees Series A Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Runway

runway.com

Runway is an AI company building real-world intelligence: multimodal models and products that can understand, simulate, generate, and act in the world, including creative, developer, and robotics tools.

Unknown Employees Series D+ Stage 2018 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

Luma

lumalabs.ai

Luma is a private AI company building multimodal generative models and creative tools for video, image, and 3D content, with an emphasis on understanding and operating in the physical world.

150+ employees Employees Series C Stage 2021 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

SpAItial

spaitial.ai

SpAItial builds physically grounded world models that generate and reason about 3D environments, turning text, images, and panoramas into interactive spatial scenes.

2-10 employees (LinkedIn) Employees Seed Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Overworld

over.world

Overworld is an AI research and development studio building real-time, local-first world models that generate interactive, playable environments you can actually control and explore.

11-50 employees Employees Pre Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Category

Robotics & Embodied Intelligence

5 companies

Models that help robots anticipate how their surroundings will change as they act within them.

One Robot

onerobot.io

One Robot builds world-model-based simulation environments for robotics teams so they can train, evaluate, and debug manipulation policies with more realistic visuals and physics before deploying on real robots. ([onerobot.io](https://www.onerobot.io/))

2-10 employees Employees Unknown Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Low

Fern

fern.bot

Fern builds high-fidelity, custom robot world models and RL environments that let robotics teams evaluate and train policies in software instead of on physical hardware.

11-50 employees Employees Pre Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: Medium

Saturn Dynamics

saturndynamics.com

Saturn Dynamics builds world models for embodied intelligence, using physics-aware generative simulation to help train and validate autonomous systems.

Unknown Employees Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Weak

Confidence: Low

Stanhope AI

stanhopeai.com

Stanhope AI is a London-based deep-tech startup building active-inference AI software that lets robots and embodied systems make autonomous decisions in the real world, including in drone and robotics use cases.

11-50 employees Employees Seed Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

1X

1x.tech

AI and robotics company building general-purpose humanoid robots, led by NEO for home use and EVE for industrial deployment. ([1x.tech](https://www.1x.tech/about))

201-500 employees Employees Unknown Stage 2014 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Category

Earth, Energy & Industrial Systems

4 companies

Models that learn how large physical systems evolve and use that understanding to support better operational decisions.

Jua.ai AG

jua.ai

Jua builds a foundation model for the physical world, starting with weather and Earth-system simulation, to improve decision-making in energy and other climate-sensitive industries.

11-50 employees Employees Series A Stage 2022 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

kausable

kausable.ai

kausable is a Heidelberg-based AI startup building causal, adaptive world models that reason from first principles and update without retraining; its flagship model, TipPFN, is positioned to predict rare but consequential events in complex dynamic systems. ([kausable.ai](https://kausable.ai/?utm_source=openai))

2-10 employees Employees Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Low

Archetype AI

archetypeai.io

Archetype AI builds a Physical AI foundation model and platform that turns real-world sensor data into understanding, predictions, and actions for physical environments.

11-50 employees Employees Series A Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

Causal Labs

causallabs.ai

Causal Labs is building a Large Physics foundation Model to learn cause-and-effect in physical systems, starting with weather prediction and control.

2-10 employees Employees Seed Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Category

Biology

3 companies

Models that represent living systems and predict how they respond when their internal state or external conditions change.

Noetik

noetik.ai

Noetik is an AI-native biotechnology company that builds foundation models and multimodal data platforms to discover and develop precision cancer therapies.

11-50 employees Employees Series A Stage 2022 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

GenBio AI

genbio.ai

GenBio AI builds multiscale AI foundation models for biology, centered on an AI-driven digital organism that can simulate, predict, and program biological systems across DNA, RNA, protein, cell, and tissue scales.

51-200 employees Employees Seed Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Bioptimus

bioptimus.com

Bioptimus is a French AI-biotech company building a universal foundation model for biology to connect and predict across molecular, cellular, tissue, and organism-level data.

Unknown Employees Seed Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Category

Society & Human Behavior

1 companies

Models that learn how individual interactions can produce changes in collective human behavior over time.

Artificial Societies

societies.io

Artificial Societies builds AI persona networks that simulate how target audiences, stakeholders, and communities will react to messages, products, and policy decisions.

2-10 employees Employees Pre Seed Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Investors

Top-tier and active investors

Top-tier investors who invested

Did not invest

a16z crypto logo
Accel logo
Bessemer logo
Insight Partners logo
Lightspeed logo
Y Combinator logo
Index logo
Balderton logo
Atomico logo
Point Nine Capital logo
Creandum logo

Other investors

Funding & Exits

Jul 2026

World Labs

Acquisition

Acquirer: World Labs • Status: Announced

World Labs
Jun 2026

Odyssey

Series B

$310M • Investors: Natural Capital, Amazon, GV, AMD Ventures, EQT, IQT

Odyssey
May 2026

Decart

Series C

$300M • Investors: Radical Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Andrej Karpathy, Atreides Management, Benchmark, Michael Eisner, Moritz Baier-Lentz, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, Toyota Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Zeev Ventures, eBay Ventures

Decart
Mar 2026

AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence)

Seed

$1B • Investors: Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Toyota Ventures, New Legacy Ventures, Temasek, SBVA, NVIDIA, Mark Cuban, Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe industriel Marcel Dassault, Sea, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Eric Schmidt, Aglaé Lab, ZEBOX Ventures, Artémis, Xavier Niel, Publicis Groupe, Samsung, Bpifrance Digital Venture, Jim Breyer, Tim & Rosemary Berners-Lee, Mark Leslie

AMI Labs - Updates
Feb 2026

Runway

Growth

$315M • Investors: General Atlantic, NVIDIA, Adobe Ventures, AllianceBernstein, AMD Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Mirae Asset, Emphatic Capital, Felicis, Premji Invest

Runway

World Labs

Series C

$1B • Investors: AMD, Autodesk, Emerson Collective, Fidelity Management & Research Company, NVIDIA, Sea

World Labs
Nov 2025

Archetype AI

Series A

$35M • Investors: IAG Capital Partners, Hitachi Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, Venrock, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Samsung Ventures, Systemiq Capital, E12 Ventures, Higher Life Ventures, Gaingels, Plug and Play Ventures

Archetype AI
Oct 2025

General Intuition

Seed

$133.7M • Investors: Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Raine

TechCrunch
Jun 2025

Jua.ai AG

Series A

$11M • Investors: Ananda Impact Ventures, Future Energy Ventures, Promus Ventures, 468 Capital, Kadmos Capital

Jua Blog
May 2025

SpAItial

Seed

$13M • Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital, Speedinvest, angel investors

SpAItial Blog
Apr 2025

Runway

Growth

$300M • Investors: General Atlantic, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, NVIDIA, SoftBank Vision Fund 2

Runway
Jan 2025

Bioptimus

Series A

$41M • Investors: Cathay Innovation, Sofinnova Partners, Bpifrance, Bpifrance Large Venture, Andera Partners, Hitachi Ventures, Boom Capital Ventures, Pomifer Capital, Sunrise, Emmanuel Cassimatis, Thomas Wolf

Bioptimus
Oct 2024

Decart

Seed

$21M • Investors: Sequoia Capital, Zeev Ventures

Decart
Sep 2024

World Labs

Series A extension

$130M • Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Radical Ventures

World Labs
Aug 2024

Noetik

Series A

$40M • Investors: Polaris Partners, Khosla Ventures, Wittington Ventures, Breakout Ventures, DCVC, Zetta Venture Partners, Catalio Capital Management, 11.2 Capital, Epic Ventures, Intermountain Ventures, North South Ventures, ApSTAT Technologies, Linearis Labs and Ventures Fund

Business Wire
Apr 2024

Archetype AI

Seed

$13M • Investors: Venrock, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Hitachi Ventures, Buckley Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures

Business Wire
Mar 2024
Feb 2024

Bioptimus

Seed

$35M • Investors: Sofinnova Partners, Bpifrance Large Venture, Frst, Cathay Innovation, Headline, Hummingbird, NJF Capital, Owkin, Top Harvest Capital, Xavier Niel

Bioptimus

Jua.ai AG

Seed

$16M • Investors: 468 Capital, Green Generation Fund, Promus Ventures, Kadmos Capital, Flix Mobility founders, Session.vc, Virtus Resources Partners, Notion.vc, InnoSuisse

TechCrunch
Sep 2023

Noetik

Seed

$14M • Investors: DCVC, Zetta Venture Partners, 11.2 Capital, Catalio Capital Management, Epic Ventures, Intermountain Ventures, North South Ventures, Chau Khuong, CJNV BioVentures, Viswa Colluru, Hummingbird Nomads Fund, Chris Gibson, Michael Secora

Business Wire
Jun 2023

Runway

series_c_extension

$141M • Investors: Google, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, Amplify Partners, Lux Capital, Coatue, Compound

Runway
Mar 2023

1X

Series A2

$23.5M • Investors: OpenAI Startup Fund, Tiger Global, Sandwater, Alliance Ventures, Skagerak Capital

1X
Dec 2022

Runway

Series C

$50M • Investors: Felicis, Amplify Partners, Lux Capital, Coatue, Compound, Madrona

Runway
Dec 2021

Runway

Series B

$35M • Investors: Coatue, Amplify Partners, Lux Ventures, Compound

Runway
Dec 2020

Runway

Series A

$8.5M • Investors: Amplify Partners, Lux Capital, Compound Ventures

Runway

On mobile, only the 10 most recent funding and exit groups are shown.

Activity

Recently added to this landscape

Artificial Societies builds AI persona networks that simulate how target audiences, stakeholders, and communities will react to messages, products, and policy decisions.

Society & Human Behavior Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Bioptimus is a French AI-biotech company building a universal foundation model for biology to connect and predict across molecular, cellular, tissue, and organism-level data.

Biology Added to map Jul 27, 2026

GenBio AI builds multiscale AI foundation models for biology, centered on an AI-driven digital organism that can simulate, predict, and program biological systems across DNA, RNA, protein, cell, and tissue scales.

Biology Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Noetik is an AI-native biotechnology company that builds foundation models and multimodal data platforms to discover and develop precision cancer therapies.

Biology Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Causal Labs is building a Large Physics foundation Model to learn cause-and-effect in physical systems, starting with weather prediction and control.

Earth, Energy & Industrial Systems Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Archetype AI builds a Physical AI foundation model and platform that turns real-world sensor data into understanding, predictions, and actions for physical environments.

Earth, Energy & Industrial Systems Added to map Jul 27, 2026

kausable is a Heidelberg-based AI startup building causal, adaptive world models that reason from first principles and update without retraining; its flagship model, TipPFN, is positioned to predict rare but consequential events in complex dynamic systems. ([kausable.ai](https://kausable.ai/?utm_source=openai))

Earth, Energy & Industrial Systems Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Jua builds a foundation model for the physical world, starting with weather and Earth-system simulation, to improve decision-making in energy and other climate-sensitive industries.

Earth, Energy & Industrial Systems Added to map Jul 27, 2026

AI and robotics company building general-purpose humanoid robots, led by NEO for home use and EVE for industrial deployment. ([1x.tech](https://www.1x.tech/about))

Robotics & Embodied Intelligence Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Stanhope AI is a London-based deep-tech startup building active-inference AI software that lets robots and embodied systems make autonomous decisions in the real world, including in drone and robotics use cases.

Robotics & Embodied Intelligence Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Saturn Dynamics builds world models for embodied intelligence, using physics-aware generative simulation to help train and validate autonomous systems.

Robotics & Embodied Intelligence Added to map Jul 27, 2026

Fern builds high-fidelity, custom robot world models and RL environments that let robotics teams evaluate and train policies in software instead of on physical hardware.

Robotics & Embodied Intelligence Added to map Jul 27, 2026

One Robot builds world-model-based simulation environments for robotics teams so they can train, evaluate, and debug manipulation policies with more realistic visuals and physics before deploying on real robots. ([onerobot.io](https://www.onerobot.io/))

Robotics & Embodied Intelligence Added to map Jul 27, 2026