Key facts
- AI lab Odyssey raised $310 million in a Series B funding round.
- The company's valuation reached $1.45 billion.
- Natural Capital led the investment round.
- Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT, and In-Q-Tel participated in the funding.
- Odyssey will utilize Amazon's Trainium chips and AWS as its preferred cloud provider.
AI lab Odyssey has secured $310 million in a Series B funding round, achieving a valuation of $1.45 billion. The investment was led by Natural Capital and saw participation from significant industry players including Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT, and In-Q-Tel.
As part of the deal, Odyssey has designated Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider and will gain access to Amazon's Trainium chips. This strategic partnership comes four months after Odyssey received investment from Nvidia's venture arm.
Founded in late 2023 by Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke, who have backgrounds in the autonomous vehicle sector, Odyssey focuses on developing general-purpose world models. These models are designed to predict and interact with the world by training on physics, cause-and-effect reasoning, and long-term prediction, rather than solely on text.
Odyssey aims to push the frontier of general world models, with CEO Oliver Cameron stating the goal is to achieve a "GPT-3 moment for the field." The company's approach differs from competitors focusing on video generation or gaming, positioning itself as a pure research lab akin to early OpenAI.
Odyssey currently has 55 employees across its Palo Alto, London, and Zurich offices, with team members having prior experience at companies like DeepMind, Tesla, Waymo, Meta, and Apple. The company has previously raised $27 million before this latest funding round.