Atlas emerges from stealth with $6M to develop its AI worldbuilding platform

After spending the past 2.5 years in stealth, building its 3D generative AI platform, Atlas has finally launched after completing two funding rounds, with $6 million raised: the first $4.5 million round was led by 6th Man Ventures (6MV), with Collab+Currency leading a second, $1.5 million round. Atlas plans to invest the funds to expand its developer tool suite, a platform currently serving Atlas' partners in generating 3D assets and worldbuilding. The company also plans to launch a self-service 3D AI creator platform so individuals can profit from the proprietary software.

Based in Vienna, Atlas was founded in 2021 by Ben James, an architect and self-taught coder who wanted to explore the intersection between design and machine learning. James recently stated in an interview with TechCrunch that Atlas was created to combine machine learning techniques with the information usually found in 2D imagery, such as line weights and annotations, and thus bring the reference materials into life as 3D assets and worlds. The resulting platform helps game developers increase their productivity. Compared with traditional methods, Altas has found that their platform dramatically reduces the time it takes them to create virtual worlds, assets, and designs that are consistent and ready to be deployed.

Atlas currently partners with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Consortium9, Shrapnel, and Square Enix. The platform builds custom-made 3D generative AI engines that developers can use to create catalogs of game-ready virtual assets following the unique style references provided by the studio. This is possible thanks to Atlas' proprietary software, built by a team with 50 years of combined experience in AI, gaming, and design. A grant from the European Union High-Level Expert Group on AI supported the research behind the platform. As part of this grant, Atlas built its technology in compliance with the Ethical Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.

Although the platform is exclusively available for enterprise and commercial use, the company has announced that alpha testing for the public platform will begin soon. The public platform will mainly target small and indie game developers but will let anyone build a fine-tuned AI model from reference material and indicators and use the resulting model to generate within the specified style. With this, the company hopes it will also be able to partner with next-gen content creators to help them realize their visions, regardless of their coding or 3D-modeling knowledge.