Odyssey raises $310 M in Series B, valued at $1.45 B

Odyssey, an artificial intelligence startup specializing in "world models," has secured $310 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at $1.45 billion. The investment, announced on June 17, 2026, was led by venture capital firm Natural Capital and included major participants Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT, and InQTel, the venture arm linked to the U.S. intelligence community.

The funding underscores growing investor interest in simulation-based AI, which is seen by many researchers as a key frontier beyond today's dominant language models. World models are AI systems designed to learn, simulate, and predict complex physical and digital environments with accurate physics, causality, and time. This technology is considered critical for developing advanced applications in robotics, autonomous vehicles, gaming, and scientific research, where AI must understand and interact with the real world.

As part of the deal, Odyssey entered a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services, which will become the startup's preferred cloud provider. Odyssey will optimize its models to run on AWS's Trainium AI accelerator chips, technology Amazon has developed for large-scale...