A Vancouver-born startup operating in the business of generative artificial intelligence has secured more than US$4 million worth of early-stage financing toward its mission of simulating human behaviour.
“Our mission is to build AI agents that behave like humans,” states Inverted AI. “We use proprietary techniques to transfer these models into simulated environments where we use them to drive human-like NPCs that are statistically accurate in terms of reactivity, realism, and diversity.”
It’s an approach to accelerating the scalable development of urban autonomy—from self-driving vehicles and independent robots to entire “smart” cities—by figuring out how a critical element (the human) will interact with it all.
“Inverted AI’s predictive human behavioural models are designed to bring the most realistic behaviour to simulation based on massive quantities of video data, that result in simulations with reactive, diverse, and realistic NPCs across vehicle classes and pedestrians,” says Frank Wood, who serves as chief executive of Inverted AI.
Gen AI is upgrading simulation tech in a potent and meaningful way, believes Eric Bukovinsky, Partner at Yaletown Partners, whose company led the round of capital for Inverted AI.
“The opportunity of generative AI to advance adaptive systems and accelerate the convergence of simulation and real-world applications, in our view, is one of the great thematic changes underway,” the VC stated.
The round of capital included other investors such as Blue Titan Ventures, Dasein Capital, Inovia Capital, Defined, and WUTIF.
The funding enables Inverted AI to further accelerate and expand its product offerings, including those based on its flagship “Imagining the Road Ahead” technology, according to a statement from the BC-based company.
This technology enables long, complex simulated scenarios to test a full range of behaviours displayed by human road users, says Wood, who founded the startup alongside UBC professor Adam Ścibior, who serves as chief of technology.
“We’re grateful for Yaletown Partners leadership, technology expertise, and ability to help us scale,” the CEO stated.
Yaletown has invested in more than 70 technology-driven companies across North America, with a total enterprise value exposure of $10 billion.
“Inverted AI is an extraordinary team that has created the world’s leading foundational models in generative AI for human behaviour with the potential to unlock significant value in all areas of autonomy,” said Bukovinsky.
Inverted AI offers API access to DRIVE, with human-like non-playable character driving behaviors that are realistic and reactive, as well as INITIALIZE, which produces realistic agent placements as if a simulation was initialized with a snapshot from the real world.
The company has also begun beta testing new products including BLAME and SCENARIO—each one serving up a key ingredient of the broader development of safe technology for autonomous vehicles and cities via scalable and accelerated simulations.
Leave a Reply