World model AI startup Odyssey has raised a $310 million Series B round at a $1.45 billion valuation, with the June 2026 funding led by Natural Capital and joined by Amazon, AMD Ventures, and GV, among others.
Founded in 2023 by CEO Oliver Cameron and CTO Jeff Hawke, Odyssey builds world models — AI systems that gather data from the physical world and simulate it with accurate physics. The startup’s approach to data collection mirrors how Google Earth operates: rather than using camera-equipped cars as Google does, Odyssey sends people out with cameras strapped to their backs. The company now offers several world models spanning use cases from video-game creation to robotics, and is known for generating interactive video from text prompts.
Both founders bring backgrounds in autonomous vehicles. Cameron previously co-founded self-driving startup Voyage, which was acquired by GM’s Cruise, where he later served as VP of product. Hawke was an engineer at UK self-driving startup Wayve.
As part of the deal, Odyssey says AWS will serve as its preferred cloud provider, and the company plans to optimize its models to run on Amazon’s Trainium AI chips. The round brings Odyssey’s total funding to $337 million.
Beyond the institutional investors, Odyssey has also attracted a group of angel backers including Google’s Jeff Dean, investor Elad Gil, Y Combinator president Garry Tan, developer platform CEO Guillermo Rauch, and Cruise founder Kyle Vogt.
The funding cements Odyssey’s status as a unicorn and positions it as a notable player in world model AI, a category the company and its backers see as the next major frontier beyond text- and chat-based large language models.
Source: TechCrunch