Emulate

AI · World Models

Funding

Emulate reportedly nears $700M seed round at $3.7B valuation

World models simulate the physical world instead of just language, a bet that has already rattled gaming stocks.

• Emulate, a UK AI startup founded in August 2026 by former DeepMind researchers, is in advanced talks to raise up to $700 million in a seed round at a roughly $3.7 billion post-money valuation, co-led by Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
• Founders Jack Parker-Holder, Matthew McGill and Philip Ball worked on DeepMind's Genie project, which generates interactive 3D environments and video from short prompts, and Emulate is building systems to simulate and predict physical-world behavior.
• Genie's January unveiling rattled the gaming industry, contributing to billions of dollars in combined market-value losses for Take-Two, Roblox and Unity as investors weighed AI's threat to game production.
• Emulate is the third DeepMind-linked UK lab to raise hundreds of millions this year, after Ineffable Intelligence's $1 billion round at a $5 billion valuation and Recursive Superintelligence's $600 million raise at a $4 billion valuation.
• The math implies a roughly $3 billion pre-money valuation plus the new $700 million in capital, reaching near-$4 billion within about a month of the company's incorporation.
• The round underscores how 'neo-labs' founded by alumni of top AI labs can command multibillion-dollar valuations purely on founder pedigree, before any product or revenue exists, intensifying competition for compute and research talent.