The Story of Worlds: Building the Future of Industrial AI Automation

Sometimes the most transformative companies start with a simple observation. For Dave Copps, it began with “video is the new text” – an insight that would eventually lead to building Worlds, a company now revolutionizing how global industries automate their physical operations.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Dave shared the journey that led to Worlds, his third venture in AI spanning over two decades. The story reveals how deep market understanding, combined with perfect timing, can create extraordinary growth opportunities.

From Anthropology to AI

Dave’s path to AI wasn’t traditional. “I was in college as a frustrated business major,” he recalls, “and I ended up dropping in on anthropology class, and I started talking about corporate culture, and I was fascinated by people.” This interest in human behavior and organizational dynamics would later inform his approach to building AI companies.

His first venture, Ingenium, was “just one of the first semantic search engines.” His second company, Brainspace, tackled digital investigations, building technology that could “review all 100 million documents and learn from them.” While these companies were successful – Brainspace sold in 2017 – they were focused on what Dave calls “back office AI.”

The Genesis of Worlds

With Worlds, Dave and his team saw an opportunity to “take AI out of the back office and bring it into the real world.” The timing was perfect. As Dave explains, “The world is changing right now, and the physical world and the digital world are collapsing together.”

Worlds developed a platform that’s “bringing AI based automation directly into the ground floor operations of all the worlds largest industrial companies.” Companies like Chevron, Petronas, and PepsiCo are using Worlds to transform their physical operations into live data streams.

Evolution Through ‘Brilliant Scope Creep’

What started as a computer vision company has evolved dramatically. Dave describes this as “brilliant scope creep” – where customer needs led to continuous innovation. “We started with a vision we thought was pretty big, but now they look back on it’s gotten so much bigger over the last two and a half years, three years.”

This evolution led to breakthrough innovations like 4D digital twins. As Dave explains, “We capture the world in 2D with cameras and sensors, but then re-express it live inside of a 4D model. So that 4D is time, so X, Y and Z plus time.”

Market Validation and Growth

The market response has been extraordinary. “Last year we grew 300% year over year,” Dave shares. “This year we projected another triple. I don’t think we’ll quite get there but we’re on pace for about 270% growth.”

This growth is driven by urgent market needs. With “15.5 million more jobs than there are people to fill them,” companies are desperately seeking automation solutions. As Dave puts it, “Building automation into your real world processes… It’s no longer a nice to have, it’s a mandate. You have to, or you won’t survive.”

The Future: Conversational AI for the Physical World

Looking ahead, Dave envisions a revolutionary shift in how humans interact with their physical environments. “We want to create a world where you can literally just start to have a conversation with your environment,” he explains. This means “having a conversation with the technology, the machines, about your environment… and being able to build AI’s with your voice.”

In January 2024, Worlds plans to announce technology that could transform AI training, potentially addressing the persistent challenge of model drift in real-world applications. As Dave hints, “We’ve come up with this idea about, well, what if we could just really automate the training process? And we think we figured it out.”

For Dave, this is just the beginning. The vision is to create a world where humans can seamlessly interact with and control their physical environment through natural conversation – a future where AI bridges the gap between human intent and physical reality. As he puts it, “That’s where we see things going. AI is going to become multimodal… except you’re going to be interfacing with an alien intelligence that maybe has a lot more data than you could ever have.”