With a valuation of $4 billion, Luma AI, invested by NVIDIA, announced a large-scale expansion plan, aiming for the "world model"!

In the fierce competition in the field of artificial intelligence, Luma AI, a startup supported by NVIDIA, is extending its frontlines from Silicon Valley in the United States to Europe.

On Tuesday local time, the company headquartered in Palo Alto officially announced its large-scale expansion plan in London. According to the plan, Luma AI will recruit approximately 200 employees at its new London base, covering various positions in research, engineering, partnerships, and strategic development, expected to be completed by early 2027. By then, the London team will account for about 40% of its global workforce.

Behind this strategic move is its strong capital support. Just two weeks ago, Luma AI announced the completion of a $900 million Series C funding round led by Humain, an AI company under the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which pushed its valuation to over $4 billion. This funding provides ample ammunition for Luma AI's global expansion and computing infrastructure development.

Luma AI's expansion is not an isolated case; it joins a growing wave of North American AI companies flooding into the UK and Europe. This move is not only to compete for top talent but also to seize new market opportunities, which will directly intensify its competition with tech giants like Google and Meta in the fields of generative video and "world models."

Huge Financing Supports Global Expansion

The recent $900 million financing completed by Luma AI is key to initiating its global expansion. This round of financing was led by Humain, which has previously received support from chip giant NVIDIA. Luma AI's CEO and co-founder Amit Jain stated:

"With the Series C funding and the upcoming global computing infrastructure development, we have the capital and capability to bring world-class AI to creative professionals around the globe."

He emphasized that expanding into Europe and the Middle East is a "logical next step," aimed at delivering AI technology directly to storytellers, agencies, and brands worldwide. Currently, the company's video models are primarily offered through application programming interfaces (APIs) and content creation suites for industries such as marketing, advertising, media, and entertainment.

Among many European cities, Luma AI chose London as its first stop and core hub for expansion. Amit Jain stated in an interview that this decision is based on the talent advantage in the UK. He said:

"Considering the universities here and research institutions like DeepMind, London has some of the best research talent."

Additionally, he added, "We also see London as the gateway to the European market."

Luma AI's actions reflect a clear industry trend. To leverage Europe's talent pool and revenue opportunities, North American AI labs are increasingly "setting up camp" here. For example, San Francisco-based Anthropic announced plans to open offices in Paris and Munich last November; Canadian AI startup Cohere stated in September last year that it would establish its EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) headquarters in Paris

The Competition in the "World Models" Track

Luma AI's core goal is to build "world models." These models can process and learn from video, audio, images, and text information, offering a broader application dimension compared to large language models (LLMs) that primarily handle text.

Although the development of "world models" is not as mature as that of LLMs, some researchers believe that they may be more critical on the path to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Amit Jain predicts that although visual models are currently "about a year to a year and a half behind" language models, over time, "world models" will become the "natural interaction interface" for AI in most everyday use cases. He stated that tech giants including Google, Meta, and NVIDIA are also developing "world models" for different use cases, making the competition in this track quite intense.

According to Amit Jain, Luma AI's latest model Ray3, released in September, has benchmark performance results that surpass OpenAI's Sora and are at a similar level to Google's Veo 3, demonstrating its determination to compete with industry giants in core technology.

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