On paper, Video Rebirth is too small to compete in the capital-intensive AI video battleground. Less than two years old, the startup has $80 million in funding and a team of 30 operating out of its Singapore headquarters and an office in Hong Kong. In a space where training cutting-edge video models costs tens of millions of dollars—and running it costs even more—Video Rebirth should be locked out of the race.

Yet, right before the public launch of its flagship model in May, the company carved out a spot on a benchmark leaderboard alongside the tech giants. Video Rebirth’s Bach model debuted at No. 6 on an Artificial Analysis text-to-video leaderboard, trailing behind models developed by Alibaba, ByteDance, Kuaishou Technology and xAI. It reigns as the highest-ranking startup model, with the cheapest price per minute of video generated among the top 10.

“For a team of our size, that was a strong signal that our architectural approach was working,” says Liu Wei, cofounder and CEO of Video Rebirth.

Developing AI video engines is just the opening act, according to Liu. By training AI to create visuals that are not just lifelike but bound by physical laws, he aims to build models that can generate hyper-realistic worlds. It’s a high-stakes field pursued by tech titans like Google, Meta and OpenAI, all of which are racing to develop the so-called world model that holds the promise of disrupting industries from autonomous driving and robotics to gaming. Against the behemoths, Liu says he’s building a “truly meaningful” world model, one that can understand its surroundings and simulate what will happen next, much like a human anticipating an outcome based on common sense and instincts.

“We do video generation in order to build a world model,” says Liu. “In three years, we’ll prove that the physical world can be simulated in real time.”

A beer commercial demo generated by Video Rebirth’s Bach model.

To pull it off, Video Rebirth in March closed a seed round totalling $80 million at an undisclosed valuation. Investors in the fundraising included AMD Ventures, the venture capital arm of billionaire Lisa Su’s U.S. AI chip developer Advanced Micro Devices; ZER01NE, the venture capital arm of billionaire Euisun Chung’s South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Group; Hiven, an investment firm affiliated with billionaire Lee Jay-hyun’s Korean food-to-entertainment conglomerate CJ Group; Korean game developer Actoz Soft; Shanghai-based Qiming Venture Partners and Gaw Capital, the Hong Kong-based private equity firm chaired by billionaire Goodwin Gaw.

Video Rebirth says it’s raising a new round in July, but declines to provide further details.

“Our rationale rests on the belief that video generation is far more than a tool for content creation; it represents one of the clearest and most viable pathways toward world models,” says Fang Wei, senior investment manager of Hyundai Cradle, a program under ZER01NE. “Video Rebirth shares this exact vision from day one, positioning its technology to unlock critical future applications in physical AI.”

Video Rebirth’s Bach targets enterprise clients in advertising, entertainment, filmmaking and........

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