Alex Brunicki

Cofounder @backedvc - investor in @labgenius, @InvTechInc, @OchreBio, @flexciton_ai, @medal_tv, @HutchGames, @AxieInfinity, @immutable

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Another day, another AI Lab company expands to London.

This time it is an AI lab building World Models i.e. models that are trained on more than just language.

It raised a $133m seed round led by @khoslaventures and @generalcatalyst last year.

Now @AdamJelley2 and @pallipau are in London to celebrate the opening of their london (aka Kings Cross) office.

WELCOME @gen_intuition

london is cooking

[Alex Brunicki @AlexBrunicki]

Extraordinary mission and remarkable what has been proven already. Delighted to be partnering with @apoorva_mehta and @LakshAithani on Abundance

[Apoorva Mehta @apoorva_mehta]

https://t.co/Mavrl0rGww

[Apoorva Mehta @apoorva_mehta]

https://t.co/Mavrl0rGww

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Britain has always been great.

The telescope, jet engine and world wide web were all invented here.

And now, a new generation is rising.

Entrepreneurs like @vriparbelli, @matiii, and @jamesdacombe are building the technologies of the future from right here.

There's more to be done and there's more to be built, but I love this country and I love seeing it trying to solve the hardest problems in the world.

LETS GO

Clips taken from @KanishkaNarayan and @matthewclifford's speech at @lfg_uk

[Alex Brunicki @AlexBrunicki]

@matthewclifford @join_ef Congratulations on an amazing run. EF transformed the UK tech scene. Very inspired to see you working on such an important mission next

[Pim de Witte @PimDeWitte]

Not many people know this but Medal is currently the second fastest growing company in games (right behind @Roblox, @DavidBaszucki 😉) - if you're top of your field in consumer, interested in helping people create memories while they're physically apart, consider joining team!

[Vinod Khosla @vkhosla]

We’re moving toward a world of abundance where AI handles the drudgery, freeing humans to do meaningful work. Highlight is building the interface for this transition. A great example of a team ignoring the skeptics to build what’s actually necessary.

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

Read this over the weekend (bonus if you read all the papers in the Research List) and you’ll be among the “very few who understand how far-reaching” the shift to World Models is.

https://t.co/DJnKX6ePc2

[Vinod Khosla @vkhosla]

Everyone says they’re building a world model. Very few actually are.

Most AI learns to see the world.

A world model learns to predict what happens in it — specifically, what happens when people do things. That’s a different problem.

Seeing is passive. Consequences require understanding cause and effect Any AI can learn to read a scene. A world model learns INTUITION about what changes it. @gen_intuition

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

There is a tremendous amount of progress happening in World Models.

Multiple labs have raised more than $1B. WMs were the star of GTC. They are a real path to embodied AI.

So @PimDeWitte & I wrote a comprehensive 19k word overview of World Models.

https://t.co/DJnKX6ePc2

[Khosla Ventures @khoslaventures]

“The deepest value isn’t physics. It’s human intuition. A physics engine models how a drone moves; it can’t model how a skilled operator reacts when surprised. In surgery, it’s the feel for how the tissue responds to the scalpel. Train on human decision-making and you capture expertise that can’t be described with words, only shown, felt.”

KV Partner Nicole Fraenkel on world labs and why we bet on @gen_intuition last year

https://t.co/SH02wQGIb3

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

Thanks James, that's very kind. I love London and the UK, and want to see it do well on the world stage. I also wish my long time colleague Dave Silver (we've worked together since our student days at Cambridge!) all the best with his exciting new venture! This is how thriving ecosystems are built.

[Financial Times @FT]

A 25-year-old British entrepreneur has raised $220mn for a secretive UK semiconductor start-up aiming to build AI chips that are faster and cheaper than Nvidia’s. https://t.co/ntkLI4aTBA

[Alex Brunicki @AlexBrunicki]

Remarkable founder and remarkable business. Congrats @jamesdacombe

[James Dacombe @jamesdacombe]

Today the Financial Times reported on OLIX's latest financing round. We've now raised just north of $250M to continue building the first Optical Tensor Processing Units (OTPUs), and deliver them to customers.

We're also publishing the OLIX Compute Manifesto: our view on what it will take to win in inference-era compute. Link in comments.

It is our belief that scaling an SRAM-architecture integrated with photonics can surpass HBM-based architectures on throughput/MW and TCO, and significantly outperform silicon-only SRAM-architectures in interactivity and latency.

We're scaling fast. If you want to work on the most important compute problem of the next decade, we're hiring across London, Austin, San Francisco, Toronto, and Bristol.

https://t.co/crouNrzYib

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

James is one of the most remarkable founders we've been fortunate to back at @join_ef - the first time when he was 17(!) with CoMind and now excited to be joining the OLIX journey.

James makes me optimistic about Britain and UK tech sovereignty. I wish we had 1000 of him!

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

A 25 year-old Thiel fellow from the UK has raised $220m to build AI chips that are faster and cheaper than NVIDIA’s.

This means Europe's newest unicorn is a CHIP COMPANY.

@jamesdacombe is the founder of @CoMind_ and OLIX, the chip company that has become Europe's latest unicorn after raising $220m from Hummingbird Ventures.

It's taking a different approach to NVIDIA by designing a “new class of accelerator” designed for high performance that is “free from the architectural and supply chain constraints”.

Other backers include Plural, Vertex Ventures, @localglobevc and @join_ef.

It's absolutely AMAZING to see a Chip company become a unicorn here in the UK.

James is one of the brightest young entrepreneurs we have in the country and in Europe and it's great to see him tackling one of the hardest industries head on.

[Pim de Witte @PimDeWitte]

And just to confirm, we are about to have:
1) a network of agents running (in many cases) autonomously, not supervised
2) with CLI/unfeathered network access
3) with memory/ability to progress towards long term goals
4) ran by humans who were psychologically exploited by status, and curiosity
5) who largely have no idea what any of those things actually mean

Good parallel to look at is things like Mirai - network size will definitely affect the malicious capabilities: https://t.co/gKj6kB5jOp

[BACKED 🏴 @BackedVC]

One last hurrah for @SlushHQ 2025. Re-live it with us through the highlights.

That was one to remember.

Helsinki, nähdään ensi kerralla 🇫🇮

Save the dates: Tuesday 17.11.2026 Power Breakfast and Official Slush LP Reception | Wednesday 18.11.2026 The BACKED Party

@awscloud @erevenasearch @goodwinlaw @Snowflake @stripe @SlushHQ @NatWest

[Vinod Khosla @vkhosla]

World models will be as important as LLM's. Next big market and General Intuition has the best data set for this...

[Pim de Witte @PimDeWitte]

We're looking for the best research scientists, engineers, and data scientist in the NYC area, please reach out!