Don’t underestimate the power of your voice. One of the latest London startups to come out of Techstars and Ubisoft’s AI accelerator is Anything World, the no-code platform that allows creators to build 3D worlds simply using their voice. Anything World has a pre-built library of 500K+ 3D models for creatives to choose from, and its proprietary machine-learning algorithm can bring any static model to life through simple voice commands. Anything World integrates with Unity, Google Poly, and other platforms. The company is currently focused on scaling its integrations and recently launched a public Beta.
London TechWatch caught up with CTO and Cofounder Gordon Midwood to learn more about the company, its plans to make integrated 3D experiences ubiquitous, and the company’s recent funding round.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
In total we raised £500K in our Pre-Seed round. Our investors include Warner Music Boost Fund, Techstars (US) and (UK), along with gaming/tech Angels
Tell us about the product or service that Anything World offers.
Anything World is a platform for creating endless 3D worlds. In real-time, using your voice if you wish, with AI behaviours applied!
Anything World is a B2B SaaS platform for creators. Our platform combines cutting-edge AI, natural language understanding, computer vision, and extensive 3D libraries to allow users to request, see, manipulate, and experience anything they can think of. It’s a fast and convenient way for creators to make limitless AI-driven 3D experiences.
In order to achieve creation on such a massive scale open-source, readily available, and remixable 3D assets are analysed by Anything World’s custom Machine Learning implementations, with animations and behaviours algorithmically assigned. This fully automated process allows the team to exploit the huge scale of readily available 3D models – the platform has access to over 500,000 3D models already – and add behaviours to literally anything.
What inspired the start of Anything World?
My cofounder, Sebastian Hofer, and I met a decade ago. Sebastian was painting street art murals in East London while I was a Creative Technologist for digital agencies from Shoreditch’s digital roundabout. We both love video games, so we initially teamed up to create a video game. Sebastian was the visual artist and I was the developer. Driven by our passion, we were able to attract great talent and expand the team to develop and release our own indie game titles like Derrick The Deathfin (Playstation), Lilt Line (Mobile), and Drive!Drive!Drive! (Steam).
Since then, we’ve been using voice technology to creating digital experiences for big clients like Google, Facebook, and Nike.
Our new mission is to empower everyone to become a 3D content creator.
How is Anything World different?
There is no other service that has the premise, functionality, or unique layers of behavioural intelligence that Anything World offers.
Anything World represents a genuine paradigm shift in how 3D assets are created. Instead of commissioning artists to model and animate a restrictive set of models, 3D assets of any kind can be requested from Anything World’s cloud platform at any time with natural behaviours already applied.
We see a landscape of 3D libraries and content creator tools. What we do differently to everyone is our automation processes. We can make any static model smart and bring it to life, ready to be used in any application at runtime. We call this our Machine Learning Magic sauce. We can also integrate with every platform at any level. So rather than competitors, we see the asset libraries and creator tools more as partners, who can all benefit from Anything World’s technology.
What market is Anything World targeting and how big is it?
The primary market we are targeting is casual and mobile gaming. The global Gaming market was worth £121B and the Mobile Gaming Market £55B in 2019. We’ve had a lot of interest from other global markets such as Music (£19B), Social (£84B), EdTech (£76B), and MarTech (£95B).
What’s your business model?
Our business model is a hybrid of subscription and royalty payments. Royalty payments will be introduced in June 2021.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
We’ve been exceptionally busy building Alpha and recently launching Beta to the public. It’s incredibly unfortunate that launching our platform has come at such a turbulent time, however, in a period of increasing economic instability, it makes our platform a low-risk option for low-cost limitless 3D voice creation.
What was the funding process like?
Through TechStars and the Ubisoft Accelerator in 2019 we were very fortunate to have met many amazing investors who committed to funding us in the early stages of our startup. Interest from big brands and enterprises made it increasingly easy to set up meetings with investors as they were encouraged by the enthusiasm and support we were getting from companies and production studios such as Facebook, Instagram, Ubisoft, Apple, IKEA, Nexus Studios, Rehab, Preloaded and Choice Provisions.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Whilst raising for our pre-seed round, Alpha hadn’t been built yet (only feasibility studies conducted) so it took leaps of faith from our investors to trust that our platform would deliver the results we were promising. In the runup to the COVID-19 lockdown the economic climate was increasingly volatile so raising our round wasn’t as successful as we would have liked but we were very lucky to raise as much as we did!
Whilst raising for our pre-seed round, Alpha hadn’t been built yet (only feasibility studies conducted) so it took leaps of faith from our investors to trust that our platform would deliver the results we were promising. In the runup to the COVID-19 lockdown the economic climate was increasingly volatile so raising our round wasn’t as successful as we would have liked but we were very lucky to raise as much as we did!
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our investors have been enthralled by the possibilities of limitless creation, the platform-agnostic nature of Anything World, 3D voice creation, and the platform’s relevance for a plethora of markets.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We have just launched Beta and are currently optimising the platform based on user experience/feedback.
We plan to optimise the way 3D models are automatically rigged to allow for realistic movement. We will start integrating the platform with Unreal Engine (it’s currently integrated with Unity), which will double the number of potential users we offer the platform to.
We will also be expanding the universe of open source 3D models to include High Poly/High Fidelity models, which will make the platform relevant to more markets and creators.
Even relatively small features such as building functionality so anyone can upload their own 3D models and behaviours to the platform will have a massive impact within the games development community.
All of these milestones will open up the platform to an even wider audience and make Anything World more appealing to even more markets.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Really understand what your company is doing differently; what do you offer that your competitors don’t/can’t? Don’t stop believing in the power of your product/brand. You can do a lot with very little, but it takes a lot of time, hard work, and faith! We’ve come further than we could possibly imagine, and it allows us the opportunity to dream even bigger than before.
You can do a lot with very little, but it takes a lot of time, hard work, and faith! We’ve come further than we could possibly imagine, and it allows us the opportunity to dream even bigger than before.
Take advantage of all the advice you can get and stay true to your core values. You’ll get there!
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We’re eager to see the launch of the first 3D and Voice creation games and experiences built using our platform. Launching the Royalty payments in June 2021 will be a big step for us and make a huge difference to our revenue.
There’s so much we want to do to optimise and expand the platform but as we’re a small team we’re being realistic about what’s possible and staying as flexible as possible to respond quickly to the needs of users and our markets. We’re keen to expand the team so that we can work on more projects simultaneously.
What is your favorite restaurant in London?
Tayyabs, Pakistani Restaurant in White Chaple – Best lamb chops!
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