AI lab Odyssey has raised $310 million in a Series B funding round, valuing the company at $1.45 billion. The round was led by Natural Capital, with participation from Amazon, AMD Ventures, Google Ventures, EQT, and the CIA-linked fund In-Q-Tel. Other investors included Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, and Elad Gil.
Odyssey is developing general world models designed to simulate the real world and perform complex tasks with minimal human intervention. According to co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron, recent breakthroughs in scaling, interactivity, multimodality, and physics accuracy have accelerated the field. Cameron stated that this funding will provide the necessary compute and infrastructure to achieve a "GPT-3 moment" for world models, which are viewed as the next major advancement in AI beyond large language models.
As part of the deal, Odyssey has named Amazon Web Services as its preferred cloud provider. This partnership grants the startup access to specialized chips, such as Trainium, which are designed for high-performance machine-learning workloads and the training of AI systems. The collaboration will involve joint research and efforts to bring these models to market, specifically for compute-intensive applications.
Over the last three years, Odyssey has released several research systems, including Odyssey-2 Max, Starchild-1, and Agora-1. These systems focus on improving multi-agent coordination in simulated environments, real-time multimodal interaction, and physics accuracy.