Veeda AI Raises $90M Seed to Build “The Matrix” for Physical AI

Training a robot to master a new motion takes thousands of trial-and-error attempts. The trouble is doing that training in the real world at all — robotic hardware doesn’t scale like compute, a single bad move can cause real physical harm, and real-world experience can’t be compressed or run in parallel. A startup betting it can solve that bottleneck with simulation just closed one of the largest seed rounds a Canadian company has ever raised.

Toronto-based Veeda AI has raised $90 million USD in seed funding, Radical Ventures announced, just three months after the company was founded. Veeda builds multimodal “world models” that simulate physical reality — infinitely scalable virtual environments where embodied AI agents can learn by trying, failing, and trying again before ever touching the real world. The founders describe the effort as building “the Matrix” for Physical AI.

All three co-founders come from Nvidia. CEO Sanja Fidler established Nvidia’s Toronto research lab in 2018, which grew into the company’s Spatial Intelligence Lab. She led it for eight years, developing simulation technology for how autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots interact with the real world, and helped build Nvidia’s first world models for physical AI. CTO Zan Gojcic and Chief Scientist Huan Ling are longtime colleagues from the same lab. Fidler, also a University of Toronto associate professor, left Nvidia earlier this year to co-found Veeda.

The round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures, with participation from 2077 Ventures. Khosla and Radical also co-led the seed round of former Google chief scientist Jeff Dean’s startup Discovery Loop earlier this month. Veeda is building out its team across four locations, including Toronto and Zurich, and plans to use the funding to hire researchers and build simulation infrastructure.

The world model race

World models have become one of AI’s most heavily funded categories in 2026. AMI Labs, founded by Yann LeCun after leaving Meta, raised $1.03 billion in Europe’s largest-ever seed round at a $3.5 billion valuation. Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has raised over $1.1 billion to pursue “spatial intelligence,” while UK-based autonomous-driving specialist Wayve — also backed by Khosla — raised $1.5 billion to prepare a robotaxi launch with Uber. Decart, which builds real-time world models for gaming, raised $300 million in May at a $3.1 billion valuation. Where Veeda focuses on robot training and Wayve on autonomous driving, AMI Labs, World Labs, and Decart are pushing into healthcare, content, and gaming applications.