Decart's new world model can simulate hours of photorealistic driving - with some caveats
Decart, a two-year-old AI startup, released Oasis 3, a real-time world model that builds photorealistic driving scenes for testing self-driving cars. The launch follows a $300 million funding round that values the company at close to $4 billion, with strategic money from Toyota, Adobe, eBay, and Nvidia. The model is open to developers through an API at $0.02 per second, though early hands-on testing by TechCrunch found the simulation still breaks down on physics and scene consistency.
Key Takeaways
- Decart is launching Oasis 3, a real-time world model that generates photorealistic driving environments for autonomous vehicle testing, now available via API for developers to build on.
AI startup Decart on Wednesday unveiled Oasis 3, its latest interactive world model that can generate photorealistic driving environments in real time, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
- "I think there's going to be an entire developer community that emerges on top of this."
The startup already has a community of more than 100,000 developers, many of whom are building products on top of its real-time video model Lucy, largely in e-commerce and livestreaming.
- The round boosted Decart's valuation to nearly $4 billion, and brought a series of strategic investors such as Toyota, Adobe, and eBay.
All of these companies are potential customers, says Leitersdorf.
- "By being so vertically integrated, we're able to be more than an order of magnitude cheaper than anyone else in the industry in order to run these models."
The startup's models are so efficient, per Leitersdorf, that it has burned through "drastically less" than $100 million in its lifetime.
- In my testing, I found the system could consistently set up a strong initial scene that matches the prompt, but the thematic integrity degraded rapidly as I moved through the world.
Stats & Key Facts
- #The launch follows a $300 million funding round that values the company at close to $4 billion, with strategic money from Toyota, Adobe, eBay, and Nvidia.
- #The model is open to developers through an API at $0.02 per second, though early hands-on testing by TechCrunch found the simulation still breaks down on physics and scene consistency.
- #The startup already has a community of more than 100,000 developers, many of whom are building products on top of its real-time video model Lucy, largely in e-commerce and livestreaming.
- #Oasis 3's release comes a few weeks after two-year-old Decart raised $300 million, which Leitersdorf says followed "huge demand increases for the models we built" in e-commerce, livestreaming, and physical AI.
Decart is launching Oasis 3, a real-time world model that generates photorealistic driving environments for autonomous vehicle testing, now available via API for developers to build on. AI startup Decart on Wednesday unveiled Oasis 3, its latest interactive world model that can generate photorealistic driving environments in real time, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The model is currently available via API.
The startup is initially targeting autonomous vehicle companies that need to simulate rare driving scenarios at scale, and plans to expand into robotics and other physical AI applications. But the bigger bet is on developers: By offering API access from day one, Decart is trying to build a developer ecosystem around world models much like how OpenAI did with language models. "It's going to be the first usable world model that people can actually program on top of," Dean Leitersdorf, co-founder and CEO of Decart, told TechCrunch.
"I think there's going to be an entire developer community that emerges on top of this." The startup already has a community of more than 100,000 developers, many of whom are building products on top of its real-time video model Lucy, largely in e-commerce and livestreaming. Oasis 3 is based on that foundation model, and it represents the company's push into physical AI.
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
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