Tripo, founded in March 2023 under the name Vast, is based in China, and with a Cayman structure for international fundraising, the company is only two and a half years old. In June, it closed a pre-A+ round worth tens of millions of dollars led by the Beijing Shunxi Equity Investment Fund and Eminence Ventures. The startup employs about one hundred people and has already reached more than $12 million in annual recurring revenue.
CEO Simon Song describes Tripo as a 3D foundational model company. “Our users just need to input any text that they want. For example, Superman, Batman, anything, and generate 3D models in seconds,” he said. The applications range from gaming and animation to advertising, 3D printing, and industrial design. Tripo now counts more than three million professional users across the world, with a concentration in Europe, the U.S., Japan, and Korea, and has signed more than 40,000 studios and corporate partners, including Tencent, NetEase, Microsoft, Sony, HTC, and Stability AI.
The company’s latest release, Tripo Studio with its 3.0 algorithm, represents a step change in quality. “This is the first time 3D generation has become product ready,” Simon said. Features include automatic segmentation that breaks models into editable parts, high-fidelity textures with physically based rendering, topology controls, and one-click export to formats such as USD, FBX, OBJ, and STL. Tripo Studio also introduces auto-rigging for avatars and creatures, smart low-poly optimization for XR and gaming, and texture editing through what the company calls a magic brush. “Before this year, AI 3D was more like a toy,” Simon explained. “With Tripo 3.0, it has become a pipeline-ready industrial tool.”
The competitive environment has become crowded, with more than a dozen startups offering 3D generation. Simon acknowledged names like Spline, Immersity, Wonder Studio, and Layer AI, but drew a line between Tripo and much of the field. “Not every company holds a 3D AI foundational model,” he said, explaining that Tripo’s advantage comes from training its own large models, publishing more than fifty papers, including over 30 at top AI conferences, and releasing more than twenty open-source projects in collaboration with Stability AI and others.
Simon’s own background helps explain the company’s direction. He studied at Johns Hopkins and worked at SenseTime, where he ran AI gaming and animation. He later co-founded Minimax, the AI startup behind Hailuo AI, before leaving to launch Tripo. “I’m a gamer and anime fan,” he said. “I always wanted to make an RPG game and my own animations. AI 3D is a new opportunity for people like me who are creative but not professional modelers who want to make 3D content.”
That motivation led to Tripo’s first consumer experiment, a short-lived app called Holy Moly. “When we started this company, we already made a 3D TikTok,” Simon said. “It got popular in the beginning and then later we bumped into an invisible wall, which is that creating 3D content is AAA, not a budget process. It takes a lot of people, a lot of time, a lot of money.” The experience convinced Simon that the underlying technology had to improve before a 3D TikTok could succeed.
Now that barrier may be falling. By automating rigging, segmentation, and texturing, Tripo Studio lowers the difficulty of producing 3D assets. Simon said this makes a consumer platform more realistic: “By developing AI 3D technology, we believe UGC creators can generate 3D models. That is important. It’s like when everyone could type words and you got Twitter.”
Presently, Tripo is focused on professional markets. Its API powers many of the startups offering AI 3D, while Tripo Studio serves studios, game developers, and XR companies. Strategic investors in gaming and media have yet to buy in, though Simon suggested companies like Epic and Tencent would be natural partners once the technology is fully established.
Charlie Fink is the author of the AR-enabled books “Metaverse,” (2017) and “Convergence” (2019). In the early 90s, Fink was EVP & COO of VR pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. He teaches at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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