S

SpAItial

AI for 3D environment generation

Research Scientist - 3D Reconstruction, SfM & SLAM

Full-TimeUpdated
No salary listed
Expert
PhD
London, UK+1 moreMore locations: Munich, Germany
In Person
AI & Machine LearningComputer Vision

About the job

Requirements
  • A PhD in computer vision with a research focus on 3D reconstruction and publications at top venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, or NeurIPS.
  • Deep understanding of multi-view geometry, including camera models, epipolar geometry, triangulation, and PnP.
  • Strong familiarity with state-of-the-art deep reconstructors (VGGT, DA3, Pi3) and related areas such as deep multi-view stereo, learned matching, and monocular depth estimation.
  • Hands-on experience with structure-from-motion and simultaneous localization and mapping systems such as COLMAP and ORB-SLAM, and nonlinear least-squares solvers such as Ceres.
  • Strong Python and PyTorch skills.
  • Comfort debugging failure cases on challenging real-world data.
Responsibilities
  • Design camera pose estimators and 3D reconstructors.
  • Build robust structure-from-motion and camera tracking pipelines for a variety of input imaging sensors.
  • Develop bundle adjusters and nonlinear optimizers, including non-perspective camera formulations.
  • Integrate and extend state-of-the-art feed-forward reconstructors (VGGT, DA3, Pi3).
  • Advance deep multi-view stereo, learned matching, and monocular depth methods for dense geometry.
  • Build evaluation metrics for pose accuracy and reconstruction quality, and drive improvements against public and internal benchmarks.
  • Scale reconstruction methods to large, diverse real-world datasets while keeping them reliable and efficient.
  • Collaborate with researchers to bring reconstruction advances into production systems.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience shipping production-grade 3D reconstruction systems.

About the company

SpAItial builds Spatial Foundation Models that can understand, generate, and reason about 3D environments, including geometry, materials, and physics, starting from minimal inputs like a single image, a short video, or text. The product creates photorealistic, interactive virtual worlds beyond simple image generation, with applications in games, entertainment, CAD and construction visualization, VR/AR, and robotics simulation. The models run via licensing and APIs for developers, allowing integration into other software and services. SpAItial differentiates itself by focusing on 3D understanding and generation (not just 2D images) and by combining perception, generation, and physical reasoning to produce usable 3D scenes. The company’s goal is to enable developers and creators to build realistic, interactive 3D environments quickly and at scale, enabling a broad set of industries to adopt advanced AI-driven 3D tools.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Seed

Total Funding

$13M

Headquarters

London, United Kingdom

Founded

2024

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • September 2026 release notes add dollhouse view, cinematic recording, and floor plans.
  • July 2026 docs added multi-panorama world building, team workspaces, and creator APIs.
  • Ten open roles in London and Munich show active scaling across engineering.

What critics are saying

  • Echo still lacks proven enterprise logos, leaving licensing revenue unvalidated by September 2026.
  • August 2026 hiring for robot learning and technical artist roles signals expensive expansion.
  • If 3D generation stays demoware, SpAItial becomes a costly research lab before 2027.

What makes SpAItial unique

  • Echo generates persistent 3D Gaussian-splat worlds from text, images, and panoramas.
  • The 2026 API, startup program, and app target developers, not only consumers.
  • Founders Niessner, Rogers, Martin-Brualla, and Novotny bring elite 3D and product pedigrees.

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Benefits

  • Health Insurance

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

9%

1 year growth

9%

2 year growth

15%
Tech.eu
Apr 16th, 2026
European 3D AI startup SpAItial raises $13M, says sector is "where ChatGPT was five years ago

SpAItial, a Munich and London-based 3D AI foundation model startup, says 3D AI models are "where ChatGPT for language was five years ago". The company, which raised $13 million in seed funding last year, has built its first 3D AI model and is seeking commercial licensing partners. CEO and co-founder Matthias Niessner, who took leave from leading the visual computing and AI lab at the Technical University of Munich, says the company plans to raise additional funding this year. However, he emphasised they won't pursue billions immediately, preferring a "step by step" approach. SpAItial's models create 3D worlds from text and image inputs, with potential applications spanning video games, robotics, construction and housing industries. Niessner attributes continued investor interest to AI's massive opportunity and the ability to build with small teams using AI coding agents.

Tech.eu
May 27th, 2025
SpAItial emerges from stealth with $13M Seed for AI-native 3D applications

AI startup SpAItial has emerged from stealth mode with a $13 million seed round led by Earlybird Venture Capital, joined by Speedinvest and several high-profile angels.

TechCrunch
May 27th, 2025
One of Europe’s top AI researchers raised a $13M seed to crack the ‘holy grail’ of models

One of Europe’s most prominent AI researchers, Matthias Niessner, is now the CEO of SpAItial, a startup working on spatial foundation models.