Safeworld Raises $12M Seed to Simulate Humans and Stress-Test Gen-AI Robots Before Deployment

Safeworld, co-founded by CMU Safe AI Lab director Ding Zhao with Kyle Wong and Simo Rachidi, has raised a $12M+ seed led by Shine Capital and a16z Speedrun, with Box Group, CMU Endowment, Innovation Endeavors and SV Angel participating. The startup builds digital twins of real environments and injects simulated robots running production software to stress-test behavior against unpredictable humans — trips, falls, varied bodies — using Genesis and MuJoCo. 'If anyone wants to deploy, they need to pay us,' Zhao told TechCrunch.