World models are capturing the tech industry’s attention and investment dollars, amid growing expectations that AI will soon move beyond our screens and into the physical world of cars, robots, and other objects.
A slew of new startups are developing world models, which are typically based on video data rather than the text-based large language models like OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude. In just the past week, AMD announced plans to acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion in stock, and video AI startup Runway unveiled the first open-weight version of its world model.
