Sanja Fidler’s world model startup Veeda AI raises $90M in seed funding
Veeda AI, a startup led by a team of former Nvidia Corp. researcher and renowned computer scientist Sanja Fidler, has taken its bow on the main stage after raising $90 million in a seed funding round today. The round, which was first reported by The Logic, was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures, is […] The post Sanja Fidler’s world model startup Veeda AI raises $90M in seed funding…
Sanja Fidler, a former Nvidia researcher and computer science legend, has spearheaded the launch of a groundbreaking startup named Veeda AI, which has just secured a whopping $90 million in seed funding. The funding round, co-lead by Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures, is one of the largest ever for a Canadian startup, and follows the company's formation just three months prior.
Veeda Innovation Inc., as the startup is officially known, is dedicated to the creation of "world models," or multimodal simulations of the physical world. The company aims to create scalable, simulated environments for training artificial intelligence agents through repeated interaction, a task that is impractical in the real world due to hardware limitations, safety concerns, and the impossibility of parallelizing real-world experience.
Fidler explains that Veeda's work is akin to creating a "Matrix" for physical AI, providing a simulated reality that will become the critical infrastructure layer for all areas of robotics. The startup's founders, Fidler, Huan Ling, and Zan Gojcic, bring a wealth of experience to their new venture. Fidler joined Nvidia in 2018 to help establish its research unit in Toronto, later becoming the company's Spatial Intelligence Lab.
There, she and her team developed software capable of simulating the behavior of autonomous vehicles and humanoid agents in the real world. This knowledge has been instrumental in the development of Nvidia's first world models for physical AI developers. Veeda's list of backers is impressive, featuring some of the most prominent names in venture capital.
In addition to their seed round, the company has already attracted backing from Khosla Ventures, Radical Ventures, and others who have invested in world model creators like Waabi Innovation Inc. (which is developing world models for fully autonomous vehicle training) and World Labs Inc. (led by Fei-Fei Li). The VCs have also shown interest in other world model makers, including Decart.ai Inc.
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