Robots learn too slowly in the real world, and Veeda AI is selling a shortcut. The startup, led by former Nvidia research chief Sanja Fidler, raised $90M in seed funding to build simulated worlds where machines can practice.
Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures co-led the round, which was first reported by The Logic. The deal ranks among the largest seed financings ever for a Canadian company and lands three months after Veeda, officially Veeda Innovation, came out of stealth.
Fidler built Nvidia’s Toronto research outpost in 2018 before leaving to start the company with researchers Huan Ling and Zan Gojcic. Her argument: robotic hardware cannot scale like compute, so agents need simulated reality to learn interactively.
In a LinkedIn post, Fidler described the mission as building simulated reality for physical AI, calling it the future infrastructure layer for all areas of robotics.
The backers know the space: Khosla and Radical previously co-led the seed round for Waabi, the autonomous trucking startup founded by Toronto AI researcher Raquel Urtasun.
The raise is another sign that investors are pouring money into world models, the software layer that lets AI practice in simulation before touching physical hardware.
