Amazon, Nvidia's and AMD's venture arms are investing $310 million in AI startup Odyssey ML, which builds world models that simulate the physical world in 3D. The round values Odyssey at $1.45 billion. Other backers include CIA-linked fund IQT, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, and investor Elad Gil.

Odyssey uses AWS as its preferred cloud provider and runs on Amazon's Trainium chips. Founders Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke come from autonomous vehicles. Cameron says the models understand physics, body language, and dynamics, things language models can't capture. The 55-person team works out of London, Zurich, and Palo Alto.

World models are the next big bet after pure language models. Instead of predicting text, they aim to simulate the physical world: physics, dynamics, and spatial relationships. Meta AI chief Yann LeCun has long argued language models alone won't reach human-level intelligence. Google Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis sees them as a key step toward general AI, and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li is pursuing the same idea at her startup World Labs.