This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paper: https://getpaper.ai/twist G2i: https://G2i.co/twist Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Plaud: https://Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: Odyssey co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron builds simulated worlds for a living, so we asked him the obvious question: are we all living in one, right now? He says he’s 90% certain that, yes, we are. To help make the case (and show off their world model technology), Oliver’s team dropped a simulated fruit fly brain into an AI world, that’s being rendered and created in real time. So far, on X, 6.2 million people have watched the virtual fly navigate an imaginary world. On TWiST, we’re digging into how world models learn about physics, gravity, and causality just by watching videos, what make Odyssey-3 an ideal trainig ground for AI agents, and why a world model only renders the parts of the world that are currently being experienced. It’s a peek inside the technology that may, one day, allow us to enslave people in The Matrix and turn them into batteries. Or train self-driving cars more effectively! One of those. Guest Oliver Cameron on X: https://x.com/olivercameron Odyssey: https://odyssey.systems/ Relevant Links The fruit fly brain flying inside Odyssey-3 (6.2M views): https://x.com/odysseyml/status/2111589148146749616 Meet Odyssey-3, Odyssey's foundation world model: https://odyssey.systems/meet-odyssey-3 Do we live in a simulation? Chances are about 50-50 (Scientific American): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/ "Beyond Perception: Proposing Our Reality as an ASI Alignment Simulation" (Ali Eslami, IPI Letters): https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/article/view/350 Elon's post: "The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2116992258520064397 Jason's post: "$40k a year on tokens… getting $2m+ in value": https://x.com/Jason/status/2117126320962351277 Plaud Web: https://web.plaud.ai Founder University Japan: https://japan.founder.university/ Most Americans say AI is bad for society and oppose more data centers (ABC/WaPo/Ipsos): https://abc7ny.com/story/most-americans-say-ai-is-bad-society-oppose-more-data-centers-abcpostipsos-poll/19964027/ Meta touts El Paso water and grid pledges as council weighs incentives (KFOX): https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/meta-touts-10b-el-paso-data-center-water-and-grid-pledges-as-council-weighs-incentives UT Austin's Texas Advance Commitment (free tuition under $100K): https://admissions.utexas.edu/cost-aid/financial-aid/texas-advance-commitment/ Andrej Karpathy's HackerTube post: https://x.com/karpathy/status/2116957135661945283 Jason's "Unsponsored" Chrome extension for Amazon: https://x.com/Jason/status/2116380861167714594 Google's first data center satellite is online and writing poetry (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/30/googles-first-data-center-satellite-is-online-and-writing-poetry/ What is low Earth orbit? (Universe Today): https://www.universetoday.com/articles/what-is-low-earth-orbit Timestamps: 0:00 Grok Bot users are at their limit 3:36 How Jason and LAUNCH get $2M+ in value out of AI 5:46 Jason’s Grok-made jacket lookbook 10:35 Paper is the legal backbone for thousands of startup founders and fund managers - including Jason. Use https://getpaper.ai/twist to get your cap table free for a year - or two years if you're leaving Carta. 14:12 Everything changed in AI over the last 90 days 20:41 G2i has been recruiting software engineers for over a decade. Go to https://g2i.co/twist to find out how G2i vets engineers, and can help you hire them in days, not weeks. 22:06 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 22:37 Wiring our Plaud into our Grok Bot 23:24 Odyssey’s fruit fly video zooms to 6.2M views 27:32 All About Simulation Theory 34:34 Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 38:33 What is the double slit experiment? 40:47 How to teach a robot about physics 50:01 OpenAI’s plan to make Americans love data centers 56:53 Meta’s El Paso data center pitch 1:02:26 AI companies should overfund local schools 1:06:27 Karpathy’s HackerTube project 1:13:02 Google’s first space data center goes online 1:17:51 How much room is there in low Earth orbit? Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com