Odyssey
AI lab building general-purpose world models, founded in 2023 by Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke. It announced a USD 310 million Series B at a USD 1.45 billion valuation in June 2026.
Industry: Artificial intelligence (world models) | Location: Palo Alto, United States | Founded: 2023 | Total Funding: USD 310M
About Odyssey
Odyssey is an AI lab that builds general-purpose world models, systems that learn physics, dynamics, cause and effect and agent behaviour. Its website says such models could support robotics, autonomous driving, science, healthcare, gaming and defence. The legal entity is Odyssey Systems, Inc., and its careers page lists offices in Palo Alto, London and Zurich. Funding coverage places its headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke founded the company in 2023, according to Odyssey's own announcement of its Series B. Cameron is chief executive. He co-founded the self-driving startup Voyage, which Cruise acquired, and later became vice president of product at Cruise, TechCrunch reported. Hawke is chief technology officer and was an engineer at the UK self-driving company Wayve.
Odyssey's blog dates Odyssey-1, described as a playable world model, to May 2025 and Odyssey-2 to October 2025. In 2026 it announced Odyssey-2 Max in April, Starchild-1 and Agora-1 in May, and Odyssey-3 in September, followed by Agora-2 and PROWL-2, a reinforcement learning framework. TechCrunch describes the company as best known for generating interactive video from text prompts, with uses ranging from video-game creation to robotics, and reported that it collects real-world data to simulate with physics.
In June 2026 Odyssey named Amazon Web Services its preferred cloud provider and said it would optimise its models for AWS Trainium chips with Amazon's Annapurna Labs.
Odyssey announced an undisclosed investment from NVentures, the venture arm of NVIDIA, and Samsung Next on 12 February 2026. On 17 June 2026 it announced a USD 310 million Series B at a USD 1.45 billion valuation, led by Natural Capital with Amazon, GV, AMD Ventures, EQT and In-Q-Tel taking part. Existing investors include Jeff Dean, Elad Gil, Qasar Younis, Garry Tan and Kyle Vogt. TechCrunch reported total funding of USD 337 million.
The company's site lists Odyssey-3, Agora-2, PROWL-2 and Starchild-1 as its current models. Open roles on the careers page at the time of research include research, infrastructure, data engineering and product positions.
Leadership
- Oliver Cameron, Co-founder and Chief Executive
- Jeff Hawke, Co-founder
- Oliver Cameron, Chief Executive