Veeda AI

AI · Robotics · World Models

Funding

Ex-Nvidia researcher Sanja Fidler raises $90M seed for Veeda AI's world models

Training robots in the real world is slow and risky, so simulated environments could become the missing infrastructure layer for robotics.

• Veeda AI, founded in June 2026 by ex-Nvidia researchers Sanja Fidler, Huan Ling and Zan Gojcic, raised over $90 million in seed funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures.
• The Toronto startup builds multimodal foundation world models that simulate physical reality, letting robots learn through interaction in virtual environments instead of costly real-world trials.
• Corporate filings show Veeda issued 60.6 million seed shares at $1 each in late July, the same day it added Radical partner Tomi Poutanen and Khosla partner Sven Strohband to its board.
• The raise ranks among the largest seed rounds ever closed by a Canadian startup, arriving less than three months after the company's incorporation.
• Fidler spent eight years at Nvidia, where she built the Toronto research unit that became its Spatial Intelligence Lab, while also teaching computer science at the University of Toronto.
• The bet follows a wider robotics surge: Tesla, Figure AI and 1X Technologies are racing to build humanoid robots, and China's Unitree Robotics saw its shares jump roughly 460% on its Shanghai debut the same week.
• World models that let robots practice safely in simulation, rather than through risky and unscalable real-world trial and error, are emerging as a key infrastructure layer for the robotics industry.