General Intuition, a New York-based artificial intelligence startup, is reportedly in advanced discussions to raise around $300 million (approximately £237 million) in a new funding round. Sources familiar with the matter indicate that this investment would elevate the company's valuation to over $2 billion (roughly £1.58 billion). The prospective backers include high-profile figures such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, alongside existing investors Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst.
The startup, which spun out of the video game clip-sharing platform Medal just eight months ago with a $134 million seed round, focuses on developing a foundation model that teaches AI agents to navigate and interact within space and time. General Intuition leverages Medal's extensive dataset, comprising two billion videos annually from ten million monthly active users. This unique dataset, derived from interactive, first-person gameplay, is considered ideal for training machines in deep spatial-temporal reasoning, enabling them to perceive, predict, and interact in real-time simulations.
Pim de Witte, co-founder of Medal, leads General Intuition alongside co-founders Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley, and Vincent Micheli, all of whom bring significant expertise in world modelling and simulation. The company's approach to AI development is distinct, focusing on building world models to train agents rather than selling the models themselves. These agents, capable of complex spatial-temporal understanding, are the core product.
The burgeoning field of 'world models' – AI systems that learn to predict how the world works – is attracting significant attention. Other companies like Runway, Decart, and World Labs have recently released their own world models, and Google's Genie 3 is integrating Google Maps data to enhance real-world simulation capabilities. The unique dataset held by General Intuition has reportedly drawn interest from major AI labs, including OpenAI, which previously attempted to acquire Medal.
The capital raised from this latest funding round is expected to be channelled into scaling up General Intuition's computational capacity. This expansion is crucial for the startup to develop and release a new product, anticipated to launch by late summer or early autumn. This strategic move aims to solidify its position in the competitive and rapidly evolving AI landscape.