Odyssey, a startup building what it calls a "universal world model," has raised $310 million in a Series B round, pushing its valuation to $1.45 billion. The round was led by Natural Capital, with participation from Amazon, GV (Google Ventures), AMD Ventures, EQT, and In-Q-Tel (IQT). Individual backers include Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, Y Combinator president Garry Tan, and former Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt.
Beyond the cash, Odyssey is doubling down on a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services. AWS will become Odyssey's preferred cloud provider, and the company will work with Amazon's Annapurna Labs to optimize its world models on AWS Trainium AI accelerators. Odyssey's team argues that world model development is approaching a "GPT-3 moment" — a tipping point where the technology shifts from research to transformative real-world deployment.
Founded in 2023 by Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke, Odyssey isn't building another generative video or language model. Instead, it's focused on a "universal world model" designed to simulate cause and effect in physical environments — both virtual and real. Its in-house technologies include Odyssey-2 Max, the multimodal world model Starchild-1, and the multi-agent interaction system Agora-1. The company envisions applications across robotics, science, healthcare, education, game development, and defense.