Spaitial

We’re entering a new era of generative AI—one where machines don’t just understand pixels or words, but entire worlds. Today, we’re introducing SpAItial: a company built to solve one of the most complex and consequential challenges in AI: creating intelligent systems that natively understand and generate 3D worlds. Backed by a world-class team and leading investors, we’re setting out to reshape how AI engages with space, time, and reality itself.

SpAItial is pioneering Spatial Foundation Models (SFMs), a groundbreaking AI paradigm designed to generate and reason about the appearance and physics of real and imagined environments. SFMs possess an intrinsic understanding of space-time, enabling transformative shifts in applications at the intersection of virtual and physical worlds.

Unlike existing generative AI technologies such as LLMs, image, or video models, SFMs operate natively in physical space. This significantly advances their cognitive capabilities, which mimics human understanding. SFMs promise to revolutionize various applications across industries, from creating immersive virtual worlds for gaming and entertainment, to advancing CAD engineering and construction, to powering next-generation VR/AR experiences, and enabling sophisticated, physically-intelligent robotics.

There are clear wins when using interactive 3D for any kind of visualization. When done with no compromises at photorealistic quality, it is simply more engaging, immersive and faithful compared to 2D content.

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Our mission: Bridging the Virtual and Physical

At SpAItial, we envision a future where AI effortlessly navigates and connects the virtual and physical realms. Our mission is to build physics-consistent, spatio-temporally grounded AI that understands the 3D world like humans do. Rather than generating images pixel by pixel, our SFMs operate natively on 3D structures—capturing geometry, materiality, and physics from the outset. This allows us to generate photorealistic, physically plausible environments from sparse inputs like a single image short-form video, or even text. It’s a foundational shift that unlocks a new class of AI-native 3D applications.

From crafting high-fidelity game environments to enabling robots to navigate dynamic spaces, SFMs are designed to power:

Immersive Media and Entertainment: Powering gaming, film, and AR/VR experiences with coherent, photorealistic 3D environments.
Digital Twins and Design Simulation: Generating real-time, high-fidelity replicas of physical environments for planning, visualization, and testing.
Autonomous Systems and Robotics: Enhancing spatial reasoning, navigation, and interaction in physical spaces.‍
Industrial and Urban Infrastructure: Enabling smarter modeling, automation, and control across construction, logistics, and manufacturing.

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Our Team: Research Meets Real-World Application

SpAItial was founded by a team of industry leaders and deep tech veterans who blend cutting-edge academic research with real-world product experience:

Matthias Niessner – Professor at TU Munich, co-founder of Synthesia, formerly at Stanford.
Luke Rogers – Formerly at McKinsey and an early leader at Cazoo, scaling the company from seed stage to IPO.
Ricardo Martin-Brualla – Formerly at Google, most recently led generative 3D efforts at Google Shopping, and previously ML at Google Beam.
David Novotny – Formerly at Meta, led initiatives in 3D asset generation and digital twinning.

This unique mix of technical excellence and startup execution positions us to lead and innovate.

Beyond the founding team, our broader technical staff brings deep expertise across AI research, including large foundational models, graphics, or 3D GenAI. Each member contributes to shaping our technology and culture. Notably, Katja Schwarz, formerly at Meta, who pioneered early generative 3D models like GRAF and VoxGRAF, and Mojtaba Bemana, whose X-Fields paper pioneered 4D neural representations and is recipient of the 2025 EuroGraphics PhD Award. We’re proud to have assembled a world-class group of builders united by a shared vision—and we're just getting started.

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Backing Our Vision

We’re excited to have secured a $13 million seed round, led by Earlybird Venture Capital, with participation from Speedinvest and a group of prominent angel investors. This funding empowers us to accelerate the development of our models, scale our infrastructure, and expand our team.

Several exceptional angel investors also participated in this round, including: Robin Rombach (Co-Founder & CEO at Black Forest Labs), Victor Riparbelli (Co-Founder & CEO at Synthesia), Steffen Tjerrild (Co-Founder & COO at Synthesia), Christian Stiebner, Edward Grefenstette, Maximlian Odendahl (ex CEO Silexica), Jon Barron, Rahul Garg, Sergej Epp (CISO at Sysdig and Palo Alto Networks), Elias Schneider (CEO Codesphere), Paul Whitehead (CEO Zoopla).

We take their support as a signal that we are on the right track and can’t wait to keep building!

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What’s Next: Scaling and Collaboration

We’re now focused on enhancing the core capabilities of our models, developing the technical foundations to support scalable deployment, and growing our team with exceptional talent across AI, graphics, and 3D systems. Alongside this, we’re actively partnering with leading organizations to explore real-world applications and pilot our technology across industries.

We’re also opening up early access to our technology. If you’re interested in trying out our models or collaborating with us, we invite you to join the waitlist and be part of the next wave of spatial AI innovation.

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Join Us on This Journey

We’re just beginning to redefine how AI perceives and interacts with the world. If you’re passionate about shaping the future of spatial intelligence, we invite you to connect with us.

Explore roles at SpAItial

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A sneak peak: