Tip-offs
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Each week, we surface promising startups & founders through data signals.
This week, we're spotlighting World Models and the architects of the post-transformer era →
World Models Surge
Two of the most credentialed researchers in AI raised $2B on the same thesis, in the same month.
Former Meta AI Chief Yann LeCun raised $1.03B for AMI Labs in early March to build AI that reasons by simulating physical environments, not predicting text. Fei-Fei Li's World Labs closed $1B the same week to build spatial models that generate navigable 3D environments from a single image.
Both bets are backed by NVIDIA, among others. Both share the same premise: LLMs predict the next word in a sequence, while world models predict the next state of a physical environment. That difference matters when a robot decides which way to reach or an autonomous car models what happens three seconds ahead.
This idea has been thirty years in the making.
Spatial AI & Simulation Startups
High-growth startups commercialising world model research into robotics training, autonomous navigation & interactive 3D environments. Ranked by website visit growth over the past 3 months.
Topological | 1,522% growth in 3 months
Physics-based foundation models for CAD, compressing engineering design validation from weeks to minutes. Raised a $500K pre-seed round in September 2025 from Y Combinator.
San Francisco, US
Gnucleus AI | 753% growth in 3 months
Generative AI autopilot for CAD and engineering simulation, built directly into the design environment. Raised a pre-seed in Jun 2025 from Baukunst.
Sunnyvale, US
The Robot Learning | 674% growth in 3 months
AI-native open-source robotics kits for training robot foundation models, with hardware, software, and training infrastructure in one stack. Raised a $500K pre-seed in Jun 2025 from Y Combinator.
San Francisco, US
General Trajectory | 429% growth in 3 months
Vision-language models for industrial robots that reason through complex physical tasks without rule-based programming. Raised a $500K pre-seed in Mar 2025 from Y Combinator.
San Francisco, US
Emmi AI | 177% growth in 3 months
Large Engineering Models (LEMs), pre-trained AI models that replace traditional numerical solvers for real-time engineering simulation. Raised a $17.1M seed in Apr 2025 from 3VC, Serena, Speedinvest, and PUSH VC.
Linz, Austria
Spatial AI & Simulation Founders
Newly minted founders building spatial AI, robotics, and autonomous systems.
Tamay Besiroglu
2x Founder. Research Scientist at MIT. Previously founded Epoch AI, the leading AI research benchmarking org. Now co-founder & CEO of Mechanize, building reinforcement learning environments that frontier AI labs use to train and evaluate their coding models.
San Francisco, US
Simone Di Somma
2x Founder. 2x Exit. Previously founded Askdata, acquired by SAP in 2022. Ex-Head of GenAI Planning & Analytics at SAP. Now CEO & Founder of Cyberwave, a platform connecting AI agents to physical machines through programmable digital twins.
Milan, Italy
Kimberly Schreiber
Stanford GSB (MBA). Ex-Product Manager at ZOLA Electric (solar energy, sub-Saharan Africa). Ex-Business Analyst at Bloomberg Television. Now co-founder & CEO of NeuroNav, delivering the spatial infrastructure layer for robots, enabling them to see, remember, and understand the physical world.
San Francisco, US
Harry Mellsop
2x founder. 1x Exit. Stanford (CS, AI). Previously CTO at Transpose, acquired by Chainalysis in May 2023. Now co-founder of Antioch, a cloud simulation platform for testing and deploying autonomous robotics systems.
New York, US
Cinnamon Sipper
Stanford (Mechanical Engineering). Ex-Product Design Engineer at Apple (iPad 13, MacBook Air, Studio Display), Ex-Product Manager at Google. Now CEO & co-founder of Godela (YC X25), an AI physics engine that models the physical world to replace simulations and prototypes.
San Francisco, US
Carried Interest
Tweets & articles of the week
Above average, by design
