01C Launches Amara, A Voice-Prompt Platform For 3D Worldbuilding
01C, a UK-based AI startup, has introduced Amara, a voice-prompt platform for creating professional-grade 3D worlds. The company says Amara allows users to generate editable, physics-aware environments in seconds, then modify every asset with natural language commands. The result can be exported directly into game engines like Unity and Unreal.
“For too long, creative flow has been interrupted by endless tools and bottlenecks between idea and execution,” said CEO and co-founder Ashkan Dabbagh. “With our platform, you create as you imagine, restoring the uninterrupted flowstate that fuels true creativity.”
Dabbagh and co-founders Rupert Aspden and James Elkin met at the National Film and Television School, where they began combining real-time game engine technology with early AI models. As the company developed their technology platform, they were selected as startup incubator EWOR Fellow (against a 0.1% application success rate) and won the 2024 Oxbridge AI Challenge (defeating 200+ competitors). “Our aim was to connect it all together,” said Dabbagh. “There were no good models out there yet, so we built a Zapier-style platform to link AI with traditional workflows.”
Version one of the platform served as a proof of concept, generating about $40,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Amara 2 is the next-generation system focused on 3D, now moving into pilot projects with studios. The company is raising funds to scale its model and grow its six-person engineering team, which includes Oxford-trained ML researchers. “We are making this technology so easy and fun to use, it will unlock the virtual frontier for everyone.” Said CTO and Co-founder Rupert Aspden.
01C Founders Rupert Aspden CTO (left), Ashkan Dabbagh CEO (middle), James Elkin COO (right)
01C
Amara’s differentiator, according to Dabbagh, is that it maintains consistency across complex scenes while reducing file sizes from gigabytes to megabytes and using fewer compute resources. The technology addresses a common production challenge: worldbuilding at scale without breaking creative momentum. “When you delay execution, your idea has already changed by the time the scene is ready,” said Dabbagh. “We want creators to stay in flow.”
The platform is initially aimed at game developers, but Dabbagh sees clear applications in film, marketing, simulation and consumer storytelling. “Coming from virtual production, we know this can work for film. You can generate a set, take a camera into Unreal, and start blocking shots immediately,” he said.
Clean data sourcing is another priority. “Copyright is a big issue,” Dabbagh noted. “We’re scanning and generating our own assets and licensing from existing libraries to ensure the data set is clean”
Early clients range from Y Combinator-backed startups to campaigns for Twix Netflix, BBC, Sky and McLaren, Starcloud generating 40M+ views from studio work alone. Ross Doherty, COO of Orbital Operations, said working with 01C made his company’s product vision tangible: “They were able to show us our vision in something we could see. It was beautiful.” While David Sheldon-Hicks, founder of Territory Studios, said: “What used to take weeks or months now happens in minutes. This platform could be the breakthrough that finally removes the bottlenecks slowing down creative production.”
With Grand Theft Auto 6 reportedly costing over $1 billion and taking more than a decade to produce, Amara points toward a different future for virtual production in which creators can speak worlds into existence, iterate in real time, and keep pace with their imagination.
01C has opened early access to the Amara platform here.