Johns Hopkins Gamer Built A $1 Billion AI Startup At 29 — Reached 20 Million Users In Just 3 Years

A three-year-old Beijing startup that turns text prompts into production-grade 3D models has crossed the billion-dollar valuation mark. Vast, founded in 2023 by 29-year-old Simon Song, raised nearly $200 million (£158 million) in its latest funding round.

Ince Capital and a venture arm of China Life Insurance Co. led the round, with Genesis Capital, Eminence Ventures and Primavera Venture Partners joining. Vast would not share its exact valuation but confirmed it now exceeds $1 billion (£790 million), placing it among China's growing cohort of AI unicorns.

Vast's flagship product, Tripo Studio, allows developers and creative professionals to generate 3D objects from text or image inputs. Users pay from $20 (£16) per month, plus token-based fees. The platform now counts roughly 20 million users, most of them in the United States, with Europe, Japan, and South Korea making up the next biggest markets.

A Johns Hopkins Gamer Who Left Language Models Behind

Song majored in international studies at Johns Hopkins University and has spoken openly about spending whole days on the strategy title Civilisation while on campus. He returned to China and joined AI firm SenseTime Group, running gaming and animation projects, before co-founding MiniMax, the company now known for the Hailuo AI video generator.

His focus kept drifting towards 3D. Song left MiniMax and started Vast in 2023, shortly after Google published DreamFusion, a research project that first showed text-to-3D generation was feasible. The company now has around 150 staff split between Beijing and Hangzhou.

'When people discuss foundation models, the conversation is almost always about language models,' Song told Bloomberg. 'But in my view, 3D models are the most foundational because they are an uncompressed reflection of the real world.'

NetEase, Sony, Tencent, ByteDance, and Microsoft are among the corporate partners already using Tripo Studio across gaming, film, and industrial design.

Nearly $200M in Funding After Alibaba-Backed Series A

The pace of fundraising has been aggressive. A $50 million (£39.5 million) Series A closed in March 2026 with Alibaba Group and Hengxu Capital leading and Baidu Ventures participating. That alone tipped Vast over the billion-dollar line. Earlier investors include the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund.

Song said the company could reach profitability within two years. The fresh capital will go towards core algorithm work, AI and 3D world-model hiring, data infrastructure, and international expansion, Chinese outlet PE Daily noted.

Vast's latest P-series model produces game-ready assets built on low-polygon frameworks, sidestepping an industry pain point — the hours of manual cleanup typically needed before an AI-generated model can enter a production pipeline. The company is also readying Project Eden, a world model capable of generating fully navigable 3D environments. Song has likened its ambitions to Marble, the platform from Fei-Fei Li's World Labs, which secured $230 million (£182 million) in 2024.

Building an 'Interactive TikTok' for 3D Gaming

Beyond enterprise tools, Vast is building a consumer app that Song calls an 'interactive TikTok'. The concept swaps passive video scrolling for bite-sized, playable 3D experiences generated by AI. VoxelMatters previously identified the project under the working title HolyMolly.

'The internet's third revolution could be interactive content — where AI generates tailored material and 3D becomes the main new medium,' said Joy Dai, managing director at backer Eminence Ventures.

One commercial test is already live. In Where Winds Meet, a role-playing game developed by NetEase, players upload photos and receive interactive 3D avatars generated in real time.

Vast operates in a field crowded with deep-pocketed rivals. Tencent Holdings' Hunyuan 3D and Silicon Valley-based Meshy are both chasing the same $200 billion (£158 billion) gaming market, which remains largely unconvinced that AI-generated assets are production-ready. Song told the South China Morning Post last year that his goal was 'to let everyone create 3D content with zero barriers and zero cost.'

'Simon is the type of CEO China's tech-driven startups desperately need,' said Steven Hu, founding partner of Ince Capital. 'He's so infectiously optimistic that at first, he sounded a bit unrealistic — very much an American-style entrepreneur.'