Generative 3D Platform Funded, Targets Heavy Industries

Generative 3D data platform Bifrost AI has secured $8 million in a series A funding round led by Carbide Ventures and included Airbus Ventures. 

Other investors in the financing included Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia Capital India and SEA), Wavemaker Partners, MD One and Techstars. 

The Bifrost AI technology aims to meet the growing demand for AI training data and 3D simulations in heavy industries such as aerospace, maritime, manufacturing and national security

Designed for AI developers, the platform offers fully controllable real-time 3D worlds in Jupyter notebooks, a web-based interactive computing platform. It generates physically accurate data for real-world scenarios that could be used for rapid training, testing and adapting models in AI and robotics.

Users could generate datasets in minutes using simulated 3D worlds that can be used to build new AI capabilities, teach robots how to solve real-world problems and to adapt to new objects, tasks and environments in hours instead of months, according to the company.

Every element of a 3D world, from camera movements to environmental conditions, could be programmed using a Python library, as well as automating and fine-tuning simulations.

Using synthetic data is cheaper than deploying costly sensors and dedicating months to manual data labeling only to face uncertain outcomes, the company said. 

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“This acceleration enables teams to build AI systems that can tackle a wider range of problems, unlock larger markets and generate more revenue with less upfront data acquisition cost,” said co-founder and chief technology officer Aravind Kandiah. 

Stephen Lee, general partner at investor Carbide Ventures, said the market for robotics and autonomous systems is rapidly increasing and the firm believes in the future AI development will rely increasingly on synthetic data instead of real data.

“We believe the Bifrost team is uniquely positioned to enable this opportunity by bridging the data, allowing systems to be trained more efficiently and quickly by an order of magnitude,” he said. “We expect their approach will unlock new use cases and opportunities, enabling AI to transform our physical world.”

The technology can also bridge the gap between 3D simulators that often fail to deliver realism and 2D generative AI that lacks the nuanced control necessary for sophisticated applications, according to Bifrost.

Airbus Ventures said it is confident the company will unlock exceptional value at the intersection of 3D generative AI, advanced simulation and design “which is already being used by major U.S. government organizations and leading global enterprises in heavy industry.”

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Bifrost is working with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on data generation engines for Moon and Mars exploration.

The new investment are targeted for accelerating commercialization of the company’s products.