Former Meta, Google employees team up, AI tech gurus raise $13 million to do AI modeling, AI generates 3D models in seconds

May 28 - Matthias Niessner, a leading 3D AI researcher in Europe and a member of the Laboratory for Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich, has taken a break from his academic work to launch a startup, SpAItial.Niessner, who was previously a co-founder of AI avatar startup Synthesia, has raised $13 million in seed funding for SpAItial - an amount that is extremely rare for a European startup. raised a $13 million seed round - an amount that is extremely rare for European startups. The funding was led by Earlybird Venture Capital, a leading European early-stage investor (which has invested in UiPath and Peak Games, among others), with participation from Speedinvest and a number of heavyweight angel investors.SpAItial hasn't yet shown much in the way of results, with only a preview video demonstrating how text can be used to generate a 3D room. Niessner's tech team includes Ricardo Martin-Brualla, who worked on Google's 3D teleconferencing platform (now known as Beam), and David Novotny, who spent six years at Meta leading the project to generate 3D assets from text, among others. (SciTech Daily)