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.
The raise comes eight months after General Intuition spun out of Medal , a platform for uploading and sharing video game clips, with a $134 million seed round. The fresh funds would bring the startup’s valuation up to just over $2 billion, sources say.
Sources tell TechCrunch General Intuition has secured funds from backers, including Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, as well as existing investors Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst.
Pim de Witte, who co-founded Medal, founded and leads General Intuition alongside co-founders Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley, and Vincent Micheli — researchers who bring expertise in world modeling and simulation.
The startup trains embodied AI and world models using Medal’s dataset of 2 billion videos per year from 10 million monthly active users. The startup’s pitch is that such a dataset — unique because it allows AI to learn from interactive, first-person gameplay — is the perfect base to teach machines deep spatial-temporal reasoning, allowing them to perceive, anticipate, and interact in real time in simulation.
That dataset has reportedly attracted the attention of OpenAI, which previously attempted to acquire Medal. And sources say OpenAI hasn’t been the only big AI lab to come knocking.
The world model space that General Intuition is playing in is heating up. Startups like Runway , Decart , and World Labs have all recently released world models, and Google’s Genie 3 recently began integrating Google Maps data for more real-world simulation capabilities.
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’s unique dataset gives it a path to viability.
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.
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TechCrunchParty-alignedCenter3 days agoGeneral Intuition, a New York-based startup focused on training AI agents to navigate space and time, is in discussions to raise $300 million, potentially increasing its valuation to over $2 billion. The company spun out of Medal, a video game clip-sharing platform, and has secured backing from figures like Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, along with venture capital firms Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst. The startup uses Medal's extensive dataset of 2 billion annual video clips to train its AI models, emphasizing the value of first-person gameplay data for developing advanced spatial-temporal
Bias read (Center): The article provides factual information about a technology startup's fundraising efforts without taking a stance or using biased language. It reports on the company's background, funding sources, and technical approach neutrally.
Official sources cited
- organisation General Intuition
- organisation Medal
The HillIndependentCenter3 days agoAmazon founder Jeff Bezos stated during a Q&A session at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris that he believes artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to labor shortages rather than replace human workers. The discussion took place between Bezos, former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, and Blue Origin CEO David Limp, focusing on the integration of Bezos' new AI startup Prometheus with Blue Origin's engineering.
Bias read (Center): The article presents a direct quote from Jeff Bezos without editorializing or emphasizing any particular ideological perspective. It does not include additional commentary or framing that would suggest a political lean. The content focuses on a technological development and its potential economic or
QuartzIndependentCenter4 days agoJeff Bezos stated that the only barrier to building data centers in space is cost, and he argued that artificial intelligence will lead to job creation rather than elimination.
Bias read (Center): The article presents Jeff Bezos' statements without overtly favoring any political perspective. It reports his views on AI's impact on employment and space-based data centers neutrally, without apparent ideological framing or selective sourcing.
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