On July 2, 2026, the general artificial intelligence firm VAST (also known as Three Inspirations) announced the completion of a strategic Series A3 financing round exceeding 1 billion yuan. This follows a significant funding round of nearly $200 million in Series A+ and A++ completed just a month prior. While the consecutive large-scale funding rounds are noteworthy, what truly captured market attention was the composition of investors in this latest round. Participants included industrial players like Geely Capital, gaming companies such as 4399, TANWAN, and Giant Interactive Group, a prominent internet strategic investment fund, and top-tier institutions like Yizhuang State-Owned Capital, Cornerstone Capital, and Addor Capital. It is relatively rare in recent years to see three gaming companies simultaneously investing in the same AI firm.

Understanding VAST: From Generating Images to Creating Interactive Worlds

Founded in 2023, VAST focuses on developing AI 3D large models and world models. The founder and CEO, Song Yachen, born in 1997, was an early co-founder and employee #001 at MiniMax. The CTO, Liang Long, holds bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Tsinghua University and previously served as the head of general models at SenseTime. The chief scientist, Cao Yanpei, also a Tsinghua alumnus with a Ph.D. in computer science, was formerly a 3D expert at Tencent AI Lab. The company positions itself as "the foundation for the next-generation UGC interactive platform and 3D content ecosystem."

Its core product line, the Tripo series of 3D large models, has established an end-to-end product matrix comprising foundational models, ecosystem plugins, and a native workbench. In March 2026, VAST concurrently released two models: Tripo H3.1 and Tripo P1.0. H3.1 set a new benchmark for precision in AI 3D with its sculptural-level geometric detail, while P1.0 can output production-ready, standardized mesh models within seconds—featuring clean topology and reasonable wireframes that can be directly imported into mainstream game engines and industrial software, reportedly accelerating the process by a hundredfold compared to other market solutions.

In May 2026, VAST released a research preview of its world model, Project Eden, which completely decouples underlying world state simulation from surface-level visual rendering, making it the world's first world model supporting multi-user concurrent interaction with persistent world states. These two technological systems work in synergy—Tripo's 3D deconstruction capabilities provide structured training data for the world model, while the world model endows 3D spaces with physical evolution and interactive logic.

Commercial data also validates its practical application capabilities. According to reports, the Tripo platform has amassed approximately 20 million users, served over 90,000 developers and enterprises, and generated more than 100 million 3D assets. Its clientele includes leading companies such as Sony, Microsoft, Tencent, NetEase, ByteDance, SAIC Motor, UBTECH, and Pop Mart.

Motivations for Three Gaming Firms' Joint Investment

The simultaneous appearance of 4399, TANWAN, and Giant Interactive Group on VAST's investor list reflects a collective anxiety within the gaming industry regarding the "industrialization bottleneck" of 3D content production.

The gaming industry has long grappled with a core contradiction: 3D assets are the most expensive, time-consuming, and difficult-to-scale production element in game development. In traditional workflows, creating a 3D character—from high-poly sculpting and topology optimization to UV unwrapping and rigging—often requires weeks or even months of manual labor. Even though AI-generated 3D tools have existed for years, the industry has faced the persistent issue of "AI 3D looking good but being impractical"—the generated high-poly models are visually impressive but have extremely high polygon counts and chaotic wireframes, necessitating extensive manual refinement before they can be used in game engines.

Tripo P1.0 directly addresses this pain point by outputting clean-topology mesh models ready for game engines within 2 seconds. For categories like environmental props, mid-to-distant background architectural components, furniture, vehicles, and simple NPCs, P1.0 has reached a production-ready level. This means game developers can bypass the lengthy process of "high-poly generation—manual retopology—low-poly refinement" and directly import AI-generated 3D assets into production pipelines.

For 4399, TANWAN, and Giant Interactive Group, the rationale for investing in VAST is not financial speculation but securing an "entry ticket" to the next-generation infrastructure for 3D content production. When AI 3D large models can increase the production efficiency of game assets by a hundredfold, any gaming company lacking this capability risks being at a significant disadvantage in the cost competition over the next three to five years.

Collective Bet by Industrial Capital: 3D Emerges as AI's Next Frontier

Another significant aspect of this funding round is the highly diversified composition of industrial capital. Geely Capital represents intelligent manufacturing and automotive cockpits; 4399, TANWAN, and Giant Interactive Group represent interactive entertainment; and a prominent internet strategic investment fund represents platform ecosystems. The simultaneous participation of automotive, gaming, internet, and local industrial fund entities is not coincidental.

These industrial investors collectively point to a shared judgment: AI 3D large models and world models are transitioning from a cutting-edge technological direction to a foundational capability related to content production, spatial computing, industrial design, and intelligent manufacturing. If AI video addresses "generating a sequence of images," AI 3D aims to solve "generating an interactive digital object"—the latter being the genuinely scarce production resource in the industrial chain.

The proceeds from VAST's current funding round will be entirely allocated to three key areas: continuously iterating core algorithms for 3D large models and world models, expanding the team of top-tier AI vision and robotics research talent, and building a massive dataset of 3D scenes; simultaneously accelerating commercialization efforts domestically and internationally, and expanding industrial cooperation in automotive, gaming, industrial, and embodied intelligence sectors. VAST's positioning is undergoing a crucial transition from "tool output" to "industrial infrastructure."

From Creating Objects to Building Worlds: Gaming Firms Bet on More Than Efficiency

The collective investment by the three gaming companies is also driven by a longer-term strategic logic. The capabilities demonstrated by Project Eden—"persistent world states" and "multi-user concurrent interaction"—point directly to the next generation of gaming experiences: moving from "single-player narratives" to "persistent, interactive, multi-user virtual worlds."

VAST's technological roadmap has been anchored in the 3D modality from the outset. While Tripo addresses "creation"—rapidly generating usable 3D assets, Project Eden tackles "world-building"—constructing a 3D world system that can be remembered, responded to, and persistently run. For the gaming industry, this is precisely the infrastructure required for next-generation open-world and metaverse-level products.

The simultaneous presence of three gaming companies on VAST's investor list signifies that the gaming industry's perception of AI is evolving from a "tool for cost reduction and efficiency gains" to a "foundational paradigm defining the next generation of products." The collective move by 4399, TANWAN, and Giant is not merely a bet on an AI tool or a financial investment target, but on a technological paradigm shifting from "generating 3D models" to "generating interactive worlds." In this window of paradigm shift, no gaming company can afford to be absent.