Odyssey, an AI lab building real-time ‘world models’, has raised $310mn at a $1.45bn valuation. The more telling number is whose names are on the round.
The Series B was led by Natural Capital, with Amazon, AMD Ventures, Google’s GV, EQT and the CIA-linked fund In-Q-Tel taking part. As part of the deal, AWS becomes Odyssey’s preferred cloud provider and supplies its Trainium chips.
That matters because of who is missing. Just four months ago, Nvidia’s venture arm, NVentures, backed Odyssey’s Series A. Nvidia is nowhere in the Series B.
A defection, or just a better deal
Trainium is Amazon’s in-house answer to Nvidia’s grip on AI computing, built for the fast, high-volume workloads that real-time world simulation demands. Pairing it with money from AMD Ventures, Nvidia’s main chip rival, makes the round read like a vote against the market leader.
