> The whole interview feels weird like its a giant PR/advertisement justification for her $250 million raise
That's entirely what this is.
You shouldn't raise at a $1B valuation without a single product in the market.
Google fired a shot across their bow by coming out with an even better world model the very next day after they announced their raise.
"World models" are going to become commoditized anyway, just like image and video models [1]. The product is what matters, and as it stands, companies like World Labs and Decart are just fancy research labs without a revenue stream.
Without a product, this is probably going to be Character.ai all over again.
That's entirely what this is.
You shouldn't raise at a $1B valuation without a single product in the market.
Google fired a shot across their bow by coming out with an even better world model the very next day after they announced their raise.
"World models" are going to become commoditized anyway, just like image and video models [1]. The product is what matters, and as it stands, companies like World Labs and Decart are just fancy research labs without a revenue stream.
Without a product, this is probably going to be Character.ai all over again.
[1] Stable Diffusion, Flux, Hunyuan, LTX-1, ...