Amazon Teams With Newly Minted Physical AI Unicorn Odyssey

Amazon invested in and launched a partnership with artificial intelligence startup Odyssey, the Financial Times reported Wednesday (June 17).

The tech giant took part in a $310 million funding round for Odyssey, which builds AI systems designed to simulate the physical world, the report said. The new funding values Odyssey, whose world models can create 3D environments, at $1.45 billion.

As part of the partnership, Odyssey will use Amazon Web Services as its preferred cloud provider and employ the latest version of the company’s Trainium chips. Odyssey’s involvement would help boost Trainium’s development, said Ron Diamant, a vice president at AWS, according to the report.

“My goal is to be able to tell my son that I built the best AI accelerator in the world,” he said, per the report.

Odyssey is part of a small group of early-stage companies building models trained on physics and the relationships between objects to go beyond the language-based models driving most popular AI tools, the report said.

World models represent a “second wave of AI” that revolutionizes industries like robotics, said Jay Zaveri, whose Natural Capital also invested in the round, according to the report.

“We have taken a human brain-like construct and only taught it language,” he said, per the report.

Odyssey Co-Founder and CEO Oliver Cameron said in the report that the company’s models “will have a much more complete understanding of the world  … physics, body language, dynamics, all these things that exist in the world that language doesn’t really capture.”

The new funding and partnership come as companies are looking to robots to fill worker shortages.

“Companies are deploying AI-powered robots and autonomous equipment not to cut headcount, but because the headcount isn’t there,” PYMNTS reported Tuesday (June 16).

Around the world, 72% of employers had difficulty finding the talent they required. That figure has remained above 70% for several years in a row.

The situation is not likely to improve, as an estimated 30.4 million baby boomers will reach the traditional retirement age of 65 by 2030. People older than 65 in the United States accounted for 12.4% in 2007 and 17.9% in 2024. They are expected to represent 21.2% by 2035.

“Employers will have to replace a lot of those vacancies one way or another,” the report said.

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