Physis Raises Over $100M Seed++ Round and Releases General World Foundation Model Physis-v0.1
World model startup Physis (逆矩阵科技) has closed a seed++ funding round surpassing $100 million, led by Matrix Partners China, 5Y Capital, and光合创投, with strategic investment from Ant Group and continued support from existing investors Gaocheng Capital and Yan Yuan Capital. The company simultaneously released Physis-v0.1, a general world foundation model that aims to serve embodied intelligence, industrial simulation, game physics, and scientific prediction through one pre-training run, focusing on physical correctness, long-range consistency, causal action, and generalization. Physis states the window for a major leap in world base model capabilities has compressed to 18 months, and plans a flagship model by end of 2026 with open-source slices and technical reports. The team, founded by Peking University scholars Chen Boyuan and Ji Jiaming, combines young researchers and experienced engineers in a flat, AI-native organization, and argues that scaling in a "physical latent space"—not pixel space—is key to unlocking a scaling law distinct from language models.