AI 3D generation company VAST has raised nearly $200 million in funding, pushing its valuation past $1 billion and earning it unicorn status. The two rounds were led by Yincet Capital and China Life Yangtze River Delta Science and Technology Innovation Fund, with participation from Shenzhen Capital Group, and strategic investments from Alibaba and Baidu.
Founder Simon Song, just 29, is a former founding member of the AI startup MiniMax and a key researcher at SenseTime. He holds a degree from Johns Hopkins University. VAST now has 150 employees and aims to reach profitability within two years.
Its platform, Tripo Studio, boasts 20 million users, primarily in the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea, and operates on a monthly subscription model. The company also debuted Eden, a “universal world model” that decouples state representation from generative rendering — a technical approach that could have big implications for 3D content creation and simulation.