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Silhouette of General Intuition co-founders in modern office, surrounded by tech equipment, celebrating $300M funding round a

Editorial illustration for General Intuition seeks USD 300M raise at USD 2B valuation, backed by Bezos, Schmidt

General Intuition seeks USD 300M raise at USD 2B...

General Intuition seeks USD 300M raise at USD 2B valuation, backed by Bezos, Schmidt

3 min read

General Intuition, a New York‑based startup, is in talks to raise about $300 million, pushing its valuation just past $2 billion, according to sources. The round would follow an $134 million seed that helped spin the company out of Medal eight months ago. Medal—originally a platform for sharing video‑game clips—feeds General Intuition with roughly 2 billion videos a year from 10 million monthly active users.

While the tech is impressive, the real pitch hinges on that dataset: first‑person gameplay that lets AI agents learn deep spatial‑temporal reasoning, perceiving, anticipating and acting in real‑time simulations. Backers reportedly include Jeff Bezos, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst. Pim de Witte, who co‑founded Medal, now leads General Intuition alongside researchers Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley and Vincent Micheli, all steeped in world‑modeling and simulation.

OpenAI once tried to acquire Medal, and other labs have shown interest, underscoring a growing scramble in the world‑model space where startups like Runway, Decart and World Labs are also vying for attention.

Sources tell TechCrunch General Intuition has secured funds from backers including Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, as well as existing investors Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst. Pim de Witte, who co-founded Medal, founded and leads General Intuition alongside co-founders Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley, and Vincent Micheli -- researchers who bring expertise in world modeling and simulation. The startup trains embodied AI and world models using Medal's dataset of 2 billion videos per year from 10 million monthly active users.

The startup's pitch is that such a dataset -- unique because it allows AI to learn from interactive, first-person gameplay -- is the perfect base to teach machines deep spatial-temporal reasoning, allowing them to perceive, anticipate, and interact in real time in simulation. That dataset has reportedly attracted the attention of OpenAI, which previously attempted to acquire Medal. And sources say OpenAI hasn't been the only big AI lab to come knocking.

The world model space that General Intuition is playing in is heating up. Startups like Runway, Decart, and World Labs have all released world models recently, and Google's Genie 3 recently began integrating Google Maps data for more real-world simulation capabilities. All of these companies see gaming and robotics training as near-term commercial use cases, but General Intuition takes a different approach: it builts world models to train agents, not to sell them.

The agents are the product, and the startup's unique dataset gives it a path to viability. General Intuition will use the funds to scale up its compute capacity so it can release a new product by the end of summer or early fall, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Why this matters

We note the $300 M raise in talks pushes General Intuition’s valuation just past $2 B, a sizable jump after an $134 M seed. The company claims to build a foundation model that teaches AI agents to navigate space and time—a focus that could interest developers building simulation or robotics tools. Backed by high‑profile investors such as Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, the funding signals confidence, yet the specifics of the model’s capabilities remain opaque.

Because the startup emerged from Medal, a video‑game‑clip platform, we wonder how that heritage translates to broader AI applications. For founders, the round illustrates that capital can still flow to niche model research, but it also raises questions about market demand and scalability. Researchers may watch for any published benchmarks, though none have been disclosed.

Ultimately, the deal underscores a willingness to bet on speculative AI directions, while leaving the practical impact of “agents moving through space and time” uncertain for now.

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