Opportunities from Odysseyml (ashby)

WHO WE ARE Odyssey https://odyssey.ml is an AI lab pioneering general world models: causal, multimodal systems that learn to predict and interact with the world over long horizons. This foundational technology promises to revolutionize robotics, science, healthcare, education, gaming, defense, and beyond. Odyssey’s founders previously pioneered the most complex application of physical AI: self-driving cars. They’ve now brought together a world-class research team from DeepMind, Tesla, Waymo, Meta, Apple, and Wayve, who have made significant contributions to language models (DeepMind Gemini), video models (DeepMind Veo), world models (Wayve GAIA), and autonomous systems (Tesla FSD). Odyssey has raised significant venture capital from GV, Amazon, AMD, EQT, NVIDIA, Natural Capital, In-Q-Tel, Elad Gil, Jeff Dean, Guillermo Rauch, Garry Tan, Kyle Vogt, and researchers from OpenAI, DeepMind, MSL, Recursive, and Thinking Machines. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR We're looking for a Strategic Business Development Principal, Foundation Models to sell Odyssey's world models to large enterprises, and to make Odyssey the world model our hyperscaler and silicon partners lead with. Selling a foundation model is not selling an application. There is no defined workflow to slot into, no incumbent to displace, and no budget line waiting. The buyer has to see the product before they can buy the model, which means the work is discovery, education, executive alignment and business case construction as much as it is closing. On top of that, both our capability and enterprise readiness for it are moving fast. What was out of scope last quarter is in scope this one. WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Sell to large enterprises. Own Odyssey's most significant enterprise relationships end to end, at executive level, from first conversation through signature, integration and expansion.
• Make Odyssey the preferred world model with partners. Work with our hyperscaler and silicon partners so their account managers lead with Odyssey. Own joint account planning, partner enablement, technical roadmap alignment, market development funding, marketplace presence and sourced pipeline.
• Make our capability sellable. Own the definitive, current view of what Odyssey can commit to commercially: capabilities, performance, requirements, limits and terms. Keep it accurate as models ship, and never sell ahead of it.
• Navigate deep enterprise cycles. Work across research, product, procurement, security, legal and finance inside large organizations. Build and arm internal champions and get to the economic buyer.
• Architect the agreements. Define how model access is packaged and priced, along with IP, data, evaluation, co-development and support terms. Build standard structures so each agreement moves faster than the last.
• Align internally. Bring our own Research, Product and Engineering leadership behind what these relationships require, and translate partner and customer requirements into roadmap influence.
• Keep re-qualifying. Institute the cadence that re-tests live opportunities against a changing model and a changing buyer. Close out what's dead, reopen what's newly possible. WHO YOU ARE
• 10+ years in strategic partnerships, business development or platform alliances, including ownership of major technology partnerships at a large platform, cloud or AI company.
• A record of personally negotiating and closing complex, multi-year commercial agreements with significant enterprise counterparties, including co-development, joint business plans, revenue share or platform integration structures.
• Experience selling or partnering around a platform or model rather than a packaged application, in a category the counterparty had no existing budget for.
• Proven at aligning senior executives on both sides. Durable C-level and senior-VP relationships externally, and a track record of moving your own Product and Engineering leadership.
• Experience making a company the preferred choice inside another organization's field or sales motion, including the enablement work that makes it real.
• Genuinely technical for a commercial person. Comfortable discussing model capability, evaluation, fine-tuning and inference economics with a CTO or head of research.
• Fluent in commercial mechanics: value exchange frameworks, pricing and packaging, IP and residual learnings, data rights, weights versus hosted access, milestone structures.
• A builder of programs and frameworks from zero, not just an operator of existing ones.
• Comfortable with a product that changes underneath you, and disciplined about re-qualifying rather than defending an old plan.
• Direct and high-integrity internally. Will say when a deal or a number is not real.
• Willing to travel to customers and to work across our Palo Alto, London and Zurich offices.