Sanja Fidler, former NVIDIA Vice President of AI Research and University of Toronto Associate Professor, announced today the launch of Veeda AI, which she co-founded with longtime collaborators Zan Gojcic and Huan Ling.
The company’s sole mission is to build simulated reality for Physical AI—described as “the Matrix” for robots—where virtual embodiments can interact with fully virtual worlds in millions of ways and learn from their own mistakes. Fidler stated that robotics will reshape how people and goods move, how manufacturing and construction occur, and how operations function in the physical world.
The core technical thesis centers on interactive learning at scale. Real-world trial-and-error training for robots is described as unsafe, expensive, and time-consuming, making it impractical. Veeda AI is therefore developing multimodal foundation world models—generative models trained on massive volumes of sensor and physical-world data—to deliver the quality, diversity, and physical realism required for scalable simulated environments. These world models are positioned as the foundational technology enabling the infrastructure layer for interactive robotics learning and evaluation.
The effort draws an explicit parallel to large language models, whose capabilities scaled significantly once training moved beyond passive internet text into interactive environments.
Veeda AI is backed by investors Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures. The founding team consists of engineers and researchers with multi-year experience across simulation, generative AI, 3D, robotics, and embodied intelligence. The company is hiring and has invited roboticists to provide input on requirements.