World models and digital worlds

• Yann LeCun: co-founder and executive chair; former Meta chief AI scientist and Turing Prize winner (Tech.eu, Mar 10, 2026)
• Alexandre LeBrun: CEO; former CEO of Nabla (Tech.eu, Mar 10, 2026)

• Mar 10, 2026, seed: $1.03bn, valued at $3.5bn. Investors named: Cathay Innovation (co-lead), Greycroft (co-lead), Hiro Capital (co-lead), HV Capital (co-lead), Bezos Expeditions (co-lead), Eric Schmidt, Tim Berners-Lee, Nvidia, Samsung (Tech.eu, Mar 10, 2026)

No named product, model or paper from AMI appeared in the pages we fetched (Tech.eu March 2026; TechCrunch 2025-12-19, https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/19/yann-lecun-confirms-his-new-world-model-startup-reportedly-seeks-5b-valuation). We did not find or fetch a company website. TechCrunch reported that Nabla signed a partnership to use AMI's models as they are developed. Founding year is not stated; Tech.eu's 'less than six months old' in March 2026 suggests late 2025.

• Dean Leitersdorf: CEO; "veterans of Israel's elite Unit 8200" (both founders) (Calcalist (Ctech), May 18, 2026)
• Moshe Shalev: CPO; "veterans of Israel's elite Unit 8200" (both founders) (Calcalist (Ctech), May 18, 2026)

• Aug 2025, not named: $100 million, valued at $3.1 billion (Globes, May 18, 2026)
• May 18, 2026, not named: $300 million, valued at $4 billion (Calcalist: "estimated valuation"). Investors named: Radical Ventures (lead), Nvidia, Atreides Management, eBay Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, Zeev Ventures, Benchmark, Andrej Karpathy, Michael Eisner (Globes (citing The Wall Street Journal); Calcalist, May 18, 2026)

The $4 billion figure is called an "estimated valuation" by Calcalist. Anthropic talks: Bloomberg, 2026-09-08, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/anthropic-said-to-walk-away-from-6-billion-decart-acquisition. Dates for Lucy 2 and Oasis 3 come from the dates of press articles (Forbes 2026-01-27, TechCrunch 2026-06-10) that Decart's own site links; Decart's pages do not show dates. Decart also sells chip-switching/inference software, not only world models.

• Pim de Witte: CEO; co-founder of Medal, the gaming-clip platform (The Robot Report, Jun 26, 2026)
• Eloi Alonso: co-developed DIAMOND, a diffusion-based world model (SiliconANGLE, Jun 18, 2026)
• Vincent Micheli: co-developed DIAMOND, a diffusion-based world model (SiliconANGLE, Jun 18, 2026)
• Adam Jelley: co-founder (no background given) (SiliconANGLE, Jun 18, 2026)

• Oct 2025, seed: $134 million. Investors named: Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst (SiliconANGLE, Jun 18, 2026)
• Jun 26, 2026, Series A: $320 million, valued at $2.3 billion. Investors named: General Catalyst (lead), Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt (The Robot Report, Jun 26, 2026)
• Aug 24, 2026, in talks (not confirmed closed): not disclosed, valued at $6 billion pre-money (reported). Investors named: Valor Equity Partners, Point72 Ventures, Seven Seven Six, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst (TechCrunch, Aug 24, 2026)

Spun out of Medal B.V. in October 2025 (TechCrunch; SiliconANGLE). The Robot Report's founding year of 2015 appears to be Medal's, so we use the spin-out year. The $6 billion figure is from sources familiar. A secondary site reports a closed $220 million round at $6.2 billion, but we could not confirm it from a trusted source. The founders' earlier research (DIAMOND, IRIS) came before the company.

• Huang Guan: founder and CEO; previously head of visual perception technology at autonomous driving chip company Horizon Robotics (Yicai Global, Jun 15, 2026)

• Mar 2026, Pre-Series B: CNY1 billion (Yicai Global, Jun 15, 2026)
• Apr 2026, Series B1: CNY1.5 billion (Yicai Global, Jun 15, 2026)
• Jun 2026, Series B2: CNY1 billion, valued at above CNY10 billion (about USD1.5 billion), post-financing. Investors named: Lion Partners Capital, China-Belgium Direct Equity Investment Fund, Wanxiang Qianchao (Yicai Global, Jun 15, 2026)
• Jul 21, 2026, nearing a round (not confirmed closed): not stated, valued at $3 billion (Bloomberg, Jul 21, 2026)

Bloomberg frames GigaAI as a world-model company; Yicai frames it as embodied AI and robotics. It sells robots as well as models, so it overlaps with robot-brains (and roboticsverdict.com). The Bloomberg article was partly paywalled.

• Oliver Cameron: CEO; co-founder and CEO of self-driving startup Voyage (acquired by GM's Cruise), later VP of product at Cruise (TechCrunch, Jun 17, 2026)
• Jeff Hawke: CTO; formerly an engineer at self-driving startup Wayve (TechCrunch, Jun 17, 2026)

• Feb 12, 2026, strategic investment: not disclosed in the fetched listing. Investors named: NVentures, Samsung Next (Odyssey (company-reported), Feb 12, 2026)
• Jun 17, 2026, Series B: $310 million, valued at $1.45 billion. Investors named: Natural Capital (lead), Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, Jeff Dean, Elad Gil, Garry Tan, Guillermo Rauch, Kyle Vogt (TechCrunch, Jun 17, 2026)

TechCrunch puts total raised at $337 million. Odyssey published its own benchmark, CaliBench (2026-08-10); it is not independent.

• Fei-Fei Li: "computer vision pioneer"; previously directed Stanford University's AI Lab and co-founded the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (SiliconANGLE, Sep 1, 2026)
• Justin Johnson: described with the other co-founders as "leaders in machine learning, generative AI, computer vision, and graphics" (World Labs (company-reported))
• Ben Mildenhall: described with the other co-founders as "leaders in machine learning, generative AI, computer vision, and graphics" (World Labs (company-reported))
• Christoph Lassner: described with the other co-founders as "leaders in machine learning, generative AI, computer vision, and graphics" (World Labs (company-reported))

• 2024, launch financing (came out of stealth): $230 million, valued at $1 billion (previous valuation, as Bloomberg describes it). Investors named: Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Radical Ventures, Nvidia's venture arm (Bloomberg, Jan 23, 2026)
• Feb 18, 2026, not named: $1 billion. Investors named: Nvidia, AMD, Autodesk ($200 million), several others (SiliconANGLE, Feb 18, 2026)

Still private as of 2026-10-20, but under a pending acquisition by AMD (TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/28/amd-will-acquire-fei-fei-lis-world-labs-for-8-2-billion/). In January 2026 Bloomberg reported talks at about $5 billion, citing people familiar; SiliconANGLE's February report of the $1 billion close gives no valuation, so the valuation of that round is not confirmed here. SiliconANGLE (Sept 2026) puts total funding at $1.2 billion. The Marble month comes from the URL of an earlier SiliconANGLE article dated 2025-11-12, which the Atlas article links.