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General Intuition’s $2.3B bet that video games can train AI agents for the real world
As soon as I entered General Intuition’s R&D floor at its New York office, the company’s 31-year-old co-founder and CEO Pim de Witte directed my attention to a monitor perched on a standing desk. Someone appeared to be playing something like Fortnite. It wasn’t a person. “Our agent has been playing for 100 hours straight,” Kent Rollins, the company’s chief product officer, said, beaming. Before I could get absorbed in the spectacle of an AI navigating the game’s virtual environment, I heard the electronic footsteps of a large quadrupedal robot approaching. “The same brain powering the agent playing the game is powering the robot,” de Witte told me. Josh Duplantis, a data analyst carrying a laptop streaming a live feed from the robot’s single camera, piped up to explain that the bot’s default mode was “exploration.” Relying on that camera, its singular eye, the giant buglike bot walked up to me, circled around me, and continued into the office. It occasionally clipped the legs of chairs or bumped into an errant trash bin, much like a toddler who hasn’t yet learned how her body relates to the world around it. Duplantis said it took just eight minutes of real-world robotics data to fine-tune an AI model for the quadruped. What’s more, that data was collected on the street, not inside the office where the bot was currently navigating itself. An agentic model that can generalize from gameplay to simulation to embodiment is General Intuition’s raison d’être. And that model’s ability to figure out its place in the world has secured the backing of some heavy hitters. On Thursday, General Intuition said it raised $320 million at a $2.3 billion valuation, confirmingTechCrunch’s previous reporting. The round brings General Intuition’s total disclosed funding to $454 million, after the$134 million roundit raised at launch last October. The startup was spun out of de Witte’s other company, Medal, which allows gamers to upload and share video game clips. The hundreds of millions of hours of uploaded gameplay provided the initial dataset to train General Intuition’s model in spatial-temporal reasoning — or understanding how to move through space and time. But the key ingredient wasn’t the gameplay footage; it was the action labels embedded in those clips: records of exactly what buttons a player pressed and when. Most competitors, de Witte says, are trying to infer actions from video alone, which he argues is insufficient. “We view this as just the next stage of future pre-training,” de Witte said. “We have a single model that can respond to Fortnite information on the screen and take action, but also to real-world dynamics in a way that an LLM could never.” At one point, de Witte set me up with a laptop running General Intuition’s world model, a simulated environment generated frame-by-frame rather than rendered by a traditional game engine.As I often dowhentesting world models, I walked straight into a series of walls. In other demos I’ve tried, the agents you control sometimes pass right through, but this one didn’t. From the millions of hours of gameplay, it somehow learned that walls are walls, ladders are for scaling, and shadows lengthen as the sun moves. For General Intuition, thisworld modelisn’t the product; it’s the training environment (referred to as “the gym” internally). The company ultimately wants to sell the agentic model itself, and de Witte argues that the action data embedded in gameplay helps the model discern the “self” from the “environment” in a way that gives it a richer understanding of causality. Impressive though General Intuition’s technology appears in demos, the company isn’t the only one trying to crack this problem. Moreover, getting such a model to hold up in the physical world, at scale, hasn’t yet been done. Most approaches of this kind require enormous amounts of real-world data that’s gathered slowly and expensively. General Intuition’s bet is that gameplay is a scalable shortcut. Its investors are okay with that bet, too. General Intuition’s latest round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from General Catalyst, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Nico Rosberg, and researchers at Google DeepMind and MIT. The vast majority of the round will go toward scaling compute capacity. General Intuition has a deal with CoreWeave and plans to focus on pre-training the next version of the model. A slice has been earmarked for making its API more broadly available by the end of summer. Vinod Khosla, whose firm led the round, says he was drawn to de Witte’s vision and the company’s proprietary data position. “If you look at LLMs, when reasoning emerged, it was a quantum leap,” Khosla told me in a phone interview. “In world models, I think the quantum leap is the emergence of intuition in the AI, a human intuition-like capability. The human action data and reaction data you have in games is the key part to the emergence of intuition.” General Intuition isn’t the only company to notice that Medal’s human action data is a key piece of the puzzle of building dynamic world models and general agents. Brianna Martin, the startup’s chief of staff, said the company was born, in part, after Medal turned down an acquisition offer from a major lab. There have been other offers since, too. De Witte and his co-founders, Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley, and Vincent Micheli, aren’t interested in being acquired, and neither are the startup’s investors looking for an exit just yet. The amount and quality of proprietary data General Intuition has via Medal is one of the reasons Khosla is convinced the startup is a generational bet, not an M&A target; that it could become the backbone for generalized agents and world models in simulation and the real world. “At this point, it would be a data acquisition, which is sort of uninteresting,” Khosla said. Part of that bet also involves trusting de Witte’s values. The entrepreneur spent three years working in the humanitarian space, including with Doctors Without Borders. As such, he has drawn a clear line for how General Intuition’s tech will be used: No agents will be employed to harm humans. “We don’t want to be an escalatory part of the system,” de Witte said. “Let’s say I were to come out and say, ‘We’re doing lethal autonomy.’ What do you think would happen in other countries?” That limit on military use cases comes as Silicon Valley is growing ever more bullish on war, though de Witte says he’s happy for his models to be used for search and rescue missions. De Witte is Dutch, and much of his team is European, which shapes the company’s identity. He says he brought on Martin in part due to her decision topublicly quit Palantirover its work with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I don’t know why Silicon Valley does what it does,” he said. “There’s a reason I’m not there.” De Witte’s ethics don’t simply limit what the models won’t do. As a gamer who made $1.5 million by building and hosting a private RuneScape server in his teens, de Witte is also thinking about what happens to the people who get left behind by what AI models can do. General Intuition recently launched a platform called Nerve, a jobs marketplace that lets gamers earn money using their existing setups. Those who sign up start with data labeling and can eventually move toward robot teleoperation and other tasks. Medal’s user base, de Witte noted, is precisely the generation most exposed to AI-driven displacement, and he wants them to have a stake in what’s coming next. De Witte wants General Intuition to be an ecosystem enabler, like Anthropic or OpenAI — a model provider that enables others to build on top of its technology. Today, the startup has a handful of customers in gaming, simulation, and robotics. “We’re not gonna build a self-driving car company,” de Witte said. “We’re gonna make it 10 times easier for the next person to build a self-driving car company.” The company says once it gets its API into more customers’ hands, it would be able to test its mettle with a variety of use cases — like testing a robot in a digital twin of a factory floor, powering a humanlike bot inside a gaming studio, or sending a quadruped to navigate hazardous environments. While a quadruped is the first physical embodiment that General Intuition has tried in the real world, it has also tried drones and other devices, including testing the model in driving games. “It works on anything that you can control using a game controller or a keyboard mouse,” de Witte said. The possibility to build a data flywheel is one of the goals. “We’ll pick customers where we can diversify the embodiments that this generalized foundation model is serving as the backbone for,” de Witte said. “So we’re going to prioritize picking customers on whether they can offer real-world data that’s going to be interesting and useful to move the needle on research. And if they’d have an agile internal team where we can be real embedded partners and learn from each other.” Khosla said that General Intuition’s proprietary data is what got it this far, and its ability to continue collecting data that no one else has will be essential. Especially because, despite impressive demos, whether the simulation-to-real-world transfer can hold at scale is an open question that nobody has fully answered yet. Correction: The headline previously misstated how much General Intuition raised in this round. The error has been fixed.
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Anthropic’s Claude is winning over paid consumers, a market owned by ChatGPT
Consumers who pay for AI have been increasingly choosing Anthropic’s Claude, trend data from credit card transaction analysis companyIndagarishows. This is a sign that the AI lab has a wider and healthier set of customers than the niche it is generally considered to command — enterprise and startup developers using Claude Code. Indagari analyzes billions of anonymized credit card transactions from about 28 million U.S. consumers. So while that data can’t give us absolute numbers about Anthropic’s revenue or total customers, it is a large enough sampling to spot trends. And the trend, in Anthropic’s case, is up and to the right. The data we analyzed covers weekly transactions from 2025 through May 10, 2026, and includes payments for items like subscriptions and API tokens. It shows Claude’s paying consumers and revenue growing, month by month, currently up about 75% since January 2026 among this segment. Notably, the gains continued evenafter the company saw a growth spike from consumers in March, when it refused to allow its models to be used by the Trump administration for mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous weapons. Another indicator of Claude’s growing popularity with consumers comes from DataCamp, an online education platform that teaches AI skills to consumers and business employees, with about 20 million users, it says. Interest in Claude among consumers on DataCamp has exploded since the start of the year. “Claude” is now the most searched term on its site, even more than the term “AI,” DataCamp tells TechCrunch. While ChatGPT courses are still far more popular with businesses doing corporate training, among self-directed consumers, demand for Claude courses is outpacing ChatGPT by three to one, the company says. Demand for courses on Claude has increased 18x in the last 30 days alone, it says. Still, while Claude’s growth is impressive, ChatGPT is still far and away the most popular AI with consumers, in every way. For instance, recent data from market intelligence firmSensor Towershows Claude growing well this year across all platforms, but still a long way behind ChatGPT. While ChatGPT’s growth has, the data implies, been more modest of late (largely due to its already enormous reach), it still has many more paying users, the Indagari data indicates. Yet, there’s no question that Claude has started to gain on ChatGPT this year in terms of dollars collected from consumers, as well as general consumer awareness and interest. As both OpenAI and Anthropic stand on the threshold ofbecoming public companies, we’re eager for a peek at the legs supporting their businesses. It’s especially unclear what impact Anthropic’s latest battle with the U.S. government will have on its business. Earlier this month, the governmentbanned Anthropic from allowing its most powerful, cybersecurity-focused models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, from being used by non-Americans, causing the AI lab to pull them from the market altogether for now. So far, though, every glimpse at data we can find shows Anthropic continuing to grow both its consumer andbusiness/enterprise users. Anthropic declined to comment.
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Amazon ups India bet with fresh $13B AI infrastructure investment
Amazon on Thursday said it would invest an additional $13 billion to expand its AI and cloud footprint in India through 2030. The fresh investment,announcedafter Amazon CEO Andy Jassy met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, will fund the expansion of Amazon Web Services’ data center capacity in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The announcement marks Amazon’s third major commitment for India in as many years. In 2023, following a meeting between Jassy and Modi, the company said it wouldinvest $15 billionby 2030,including $12.7 billionfor Amazon Web Services. It followed that with anover $35 billion commitmentin December 2025. The company’s investment commitments in the country now total $48 billion. Amazon did not detail how the total $48 billion would be deployed across its India businesses. Long-term commitments by technology companies usually include both capital and operating expenditures, rather than only new infrastructure spending. Amazon’s announcement follows a wave of investments by global technology companies that are betting that India will become a major hub for the computing infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence products.Microsoftsaid in December it would invest $17.5 billion in India by 2029, andGooglesaid in October it would spend $15 billion to build an AI hub and data center infrastructure in the country. India has also attracted billions of dollars in commitments for data center projects from investors includingAustralia’s AirTrunk,Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s CPP Investments, and domestic conglomeratesReliance IndustriesandAdani Group. New Delhi has sought to attract more investment through policy incentives, includingtax exemptionsfor foreign cloud providers on services sold overseas if those workloads are run from Indian data centers. Amazon is also investing in its domestic retail and logistics network. The company plans to open more than 20 fulfillment centers, and over 100 last-mile delivery stations this year, and this week it detailed plans to expand its quick-commerce service, Amazon Now, tomore than 300 citiesand towns in the country. The expansion comes as Amazon seeks to gain ground in India’s crowded quick commerce market, where it competes with Eternal-owned Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart, Zepto, and Walmart-owned Flipkart. Earlier this week, Flipkart said it plans toopen 1,500 micro-fulfillment centersacross the country by the end of 2026.
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Adobe acquires image and video enhancement tool maker Topaz Labs
Adobe on Thursday said it is acquiringTopaz Labs, which offers AI models for video and image enhancement, and that it will make it a part of its creative business. Topaz Labs, which wonan Emmy last year for its production tech, has existed for more than two decades, making tools for enhancing videos and images. In recent years, the company has released its own models: Astra for AI video upscaling and Wonder for image retouching and enhancement. The startup has also worked ona technologythat makes it easier to run large video models on consumer-grade GPUs. Adobe, which already offers some of Topaz’s tools in its Creative Cloud suite, said it will integrate Topaz’s models into its Firefly AI app as well as other parts of its image and video editing suites. Adobe said Topaz’s offerings will be available as stand-alone services through its website. Deepa Subramaniam, VP of product marketing for Creative Cloud at Adobe, said professionals who want to combine real-life footage with AI clips can use Topaz’s products for tasks like sharpening details, reducing noise, or restoring archival footage. “Topaz Labs brings deep expertise in optimizing large, complex AI models to run directly on device, a capability that will allow Adobe to deliver faster, more responsive experiences for customers and make advanced AI more accessible and cost-effective for creatives. In addition, Topaz Labs is trusted by professionals of all creative crafts – from designers and video professionals to photographers and enterprise creative teams,” Subramaniam said in an emailed statement. Adobe has been in fierce competition with Canva and DaVinci Resolve-owner Blackmagic Design in the image and video editing space. Adobe has been stuffingAI into all of its appsand has also created an AI-centric media editing studio withFirefly. By acquiring startups like Topaz Labs, Adobe wants to keep its users from turning to other software for video editing and enhancements, encouraging them to stick to its ecosystem. Adobe said the transaction will close in the second half of 2026.
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With just 2 days left, now is the time to lock in your spot atTechCrunch Founder Summit 2026and save up to $190 before Early Bird rates expire on June 26 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Founders rarely scale alone. The fastest path to growth comes from learning from those who have already done it, connecting with peers facing similar challenges, and building relationships with investors who can help accelerate the next stage of your company. On November 4 in Boston, more than 1,000 founders and investors will come together for a highly curated day of tactical learning, candid conversations, and meaningful networking designed to help founders move faster and make smarter decisions. Early Bird pricing ends in 2 days. You can also save up to 30% with group discounts for teams of four or more.Register now before rates increase June 26. TechCrunch Founder Summitis designed specifically for founders. Every session, discussion, and networking opportunity is built around the challenges of starting, scaling, and funding a company. You’ll connect with: Whether you’re preparing to raise capital, refining your go-to-market strategy, or working toward your next growth milestone, Founder Summit creates opportunities for conversations that can change the trajectory of your business. Founder Summitfocuses on the decisions and inflection points that shape a company’s future. Through breakout sessions and roundtable discussions, you’ll gain practical guidance on topics such as: These founder-led conversations are designed to deliver actionable takeaways you can apply right away. Past speakers have shared candid lessons on scaling companies, raising capital, and navigating growth, including: Additional speakers have included leaders from Sequoia Capital, NFX, Underscore VC, Glasswing Ventures, Wing Venture Capital, Construct Capital, Greylock, and Precursor Ventures. The 2026 agenda is currently taking shape, with more founders, operators, and investorsto be announced on the event page soon. Interested in leading a discussion?Submit a roundtable or breakout session topicfor a chance to be voted onto the agenda by the TechCrunch audience. The opportunity to save up to $190 forTechCrunch Founder Summitends tomorrow, June 26, 11:59 p.m. PT. Join the founders, operators, and investors shaping the next generation of startups. Gain practical insights, expand your network, and build relationships that support long-term growth. Early Bird rates end June 26 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Save up to $190 on your pass and up to 30% when registering as a group.Register now before prices increase in two days. Interested in exhibiting at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026?Reserve your exhibit tableand connect directly with founders, investors, and startup decision-makers.
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EXL to Acquire AI Training Firm iMerit in $310 Million Deal to Boost Enterprise AI Capabilities
The acquisition will bring iMerit’s expertise in AI model training, reinforcement learning and multimodal evaluation to EXL, helping clients build more reliable and industry-specific AI systems.
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At Axtria Ignite 2026, Trust Emerges as the Missing Layer in Enterprise AI
With discussions led by Axtria's CEO, Jaswinder Chadha, the focus was on building a strong foundation for AI deployment, emphasising data quality, governance, and organisational readiness.
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Bengaluru Startup Airbound to Build Drone Delivery Network in Andhra Pradesh
Airbound aims to build a 10,000-flight-a-day drone delivery network across Andhra Pradesh.
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How Biocon is Leveraging AI to Reshape Both Drug Discovery and Manufacturing
Biocon's chief technology officer says artificial intelligence is being deployed across drug development and manufacturing, but insists human accountability remains intact.
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AI Coding Tool Costs to Exceed Developer Salaries by 2028: Gartner Report
Gartner forecasts that expenditure on AI coding tools will exceed software developer salaries by 2028 due to rising token consumption.
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Hugging Face Crosses $100 Million in Annual Run Rate
In March, the company said its ecosystem had grown to 13 million users, hosting more than 2 million public AI models and 500,000 public datasets
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As AI Reshapes Consulting, Deloitte is Betting on SAP's Enterprise AI Future
As agentic AI compresses the value of traditional consulting work, Deloitte is betting that its new SAP-focused delivery centre in Bengaluru can operationalise AI inside core business systems.
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