Inworld AI raises new round at $500M valuation for AI game characters
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Inworld AI has raised new funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing the valuation of the maker of an AI-based character engine for games to over $500 million.
That valuation makes Inworld into a frontrunner when it comes to AI and games. The round includes additional investments from Stanford University, Samsung Next, and new and existing strategic investors such as Microsoft’s M12 fund, First Spark Ventures cofounded by Eric Schmidt, and LG Technology Ventures.
With over $100 million in total funding, Inworld AI is now the best-funded startup at the intersection of AI and gaming, said Kylan Gibbs, cofounder and chief product officer of Inworld AI, in an interview with GamesBeat. That’s a lot of money for a company built around making non-player characters (NPCs). The twist is that these NPCs promise to be as smart as people.
The company will use the funding to accelerate research and development, hire top talent, invest in infrastructure, and launch an open-source version of its character engine.
“Inworld’s commitment to open source is a testament to our belief that collaboration fuels innovation,” said Michael Ermolenko, CTO and cofounder of Inworld, in a statement. “Working with the open source developer community, we’ll push forward innovations in generative AI that elevate the entire gaming industry.”
This is all in the name of doing things that weren’t possible without today’s advanced AI. In big games like The Legend of Zelda, Gibbs hopes to turn the characters and interactions into the central part of the experience in ways that don’t happen in today’s games.
“You may have to, for example, go
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