Why this CEO thinks video games make better training data than the internet | Equity Podcast

When it comes to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), large language models just don’t have what it takes. Models like ChatGPT and Claude are great at text, but they're less skilled at understanding how things actually move through space and time — an essential skill for producing intelligence that generalizes. That gap, it turns out, might be filled by gaming data. That's the bet behind General Intuition, a Bezos-backed, New York-based startup valued at $2.3 billion that just closed a $320 million round with Coatue, Eric Schmidt, and researchers at MIT and Google DeepMind joining its list of investors. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte joins Rebecca Bellan to dig into why world models trained on gaming data might be the next big leap in physical AI, how the company spun out of gaming platform Medal TV, and where the ethical red lines are when your models could end up being used for defense applications. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Chapters 00:00 Intro 1:04 General Intuition's $320M round and its star-studded backers 2:23 Pre-training on games instead of text 6:02 Medal TV's proprietary data and real-world robotics demo 9:38 Turning down an OpenAI acquisition offer to build a generational company 11:05 The co-founders behind the DIAMOND world model paper 14:11 Finding data gold beyond gaming, and why YouTube video falls short 19:44 Defense red lines, ethics, and building jobs through Nerve 25:46 Outro