Altera Secures $9m

Written by Dante Uzel on 09 May 2024 18:37

AI startup Altera has secured $9m in a seed round, co-led by Patron and First Spark Ventures. Funding round brings its total funding to $11.1m.The company plans to allocate these funds towards enhancing its artificial intelligence software and expanding its team for future development. Notable investors in this round include A16Z Speedrun, Vamos Ventures, and Alumni Ventures, alongside veteran investor Mitch Lasky, Valorant co-founder Stephen Lim, Supercell executive board member Greg Harper, Duolingo CBO Bob Meese, and Vertex Pharma co-founder Rich Aldrich. Altera recently made headlines by creating an AI agent capable of playing Minecraft alongside other players, achieving the diamond pickaxe achievement in-game without any human intervention.

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Their initial step was to develop a model of a digital human engaging in Minecraft, a game with a vast user base owned by Microsoft. With this in mind, the team devised an AI agent capable of seamlessly joining a human player as a companion within the game environment.

Brian Cho, co-founder and general partner at Patron, stated "As an investor, it's not often you come across a startup demo that fundamentally shifts your perspective on human-computer interaction. The talented team at Altera has developed extraordinary AI agent tech that has the potential to go beyond its gaming origins and impact numerous industries."