Today, 01C announced the launch of Amara, an AI-powered platform that enables designers, game developers and 3D artists to create and iterate complete 3D environments in seconds using simple text prompts.  London-based 01C was founded by National Film and Television School graduates Ashkan Dabbagh, Rupert Aspden, and James Elkin, and now includes AI researchers and game industry veterans. In June 2025, the company raised €500,000 in funding backed by EWOR, a radically selective fellowship backing the world's top 0.1 per cent founders, built and led by unicorn builders, I spoke to CEO Ashkan Dabbagh to learn more.   Turning hours of asset work into instant environments The platform targets one of the biggest bottlenecks in development: environment creation. Tasks that once required hours of manual asset placement, lighting, and refinement can now be completed in seconds through conversational AI. Built natively for Unreal Engine, Amara ncludes a 3D Mesh Generator — a generative AI system that produces production-ready assets on demand and plugs directly into existing workflows. According to Dabbagh, the company’s key differentiator is its refusal to lock developers into a new ecosystem. While many competing tools require teams to abandon their engines and rebuild inside proprietary platforms, 01C is designed to integrate with existing pipelines. “We’re focused on helping people already using game engines like Unreal work faster,” he says. “We don’t want them to change their tech stack. We want to integrate into their workflows. Long term, we have a bigger roadmap, but this is the first step.” 01C lets users turn photos or text prompts into 3D assets. “You can use it for games, animation, printing — anything,” Dabbagh explains. “The app lets you speak or type to create 3D environments, similar to prompting ChatGPT, except it generates interactive worlds.” “We’re accelerating existing workflows the way Cursor did for coding. Amara empowers creatives to explore countless scene variations in the time it previously took to build one — enabling faster iteration and better final products.” Why native 3D matters more than video While video-based generative systems can produce visually impressive results, Dabbagh argues they fall short in interactive reliability. “You can’t use video consistently with interactive systems,” he explains. In interactive video models, each frame is regenerated in real time, which introduces instability. A user might look away and return to find subtle differences in the scene because the system is recreating pixels rather than maintaining persistent objects. For game development, that lack of permanence is a dealbreaker. According to Dabbagh, every asset in a playable environment needs stable physics and predictable behaviour.  “Game development requires permanence. Every asset needs physics and reliability. You can interact with it without regeneration errors,” he says, adding that current video approaches simply cannot guarantee that level of consistency. He sees interactive video as suitable for lightweight or experimental experiences, but not for large-scale productions.  “Interactive video is fine for small indie experiences or casual fun, but you can’t build something like the next Call of Duty on that foundation. The physics simply doesn’t work.” Lessons from early access Before launching its platform to the public, AMARA was used internally for creating over 10 viral campaigns and featured on projects including for McLaren, eBay, Twix, Starcloud, with over 40 million views. All growth was achieved organically through word of mouth and returning customers. According to Dabbagh, before today's public launch, the team had a slightly different engine version.  Designers liked it, but startups and tech companies didn’t want to operate it themselves — they preferred experienced professionals to use it.  “That showed us we’re not replacing designers. Creative storytelling is still valuable and necessary.” Another takeaway is that no product launches perfectly. Early access is about gathering feedback, understanding real demand, and killing features that don’t matter.  “It helps you discover what problems actually exist, " shared Dabbagh.  Levelling the playing field for smaller studios 01C has applicability across a variety of design environments.  For example, it offers a competitive advantage to smaller indie game studios: “Large studios have resources. Smaller teams want AAA quality but don’t have the budget,” explained Dabbagh.  “If something takes two weeks manually and we reduce it to two days, that’s a massive time and cost improvement. We give small teams the flexibility to produce higher quality work with fewer resources.” This extends to film and television. Dabbagh studied AI at Oxford and has built a career in technical roles at Warner Bros. and Amazon Studios. He also served as a production manager at DNEG, the visual FX firm behind Interstellar and Dune. On film sets, if directors change their minds, it often takes hours or days to rebuild environments. You stop production and reshoot later. “With our tools, directors could change environments live on set. They see something on the volume, don’t like it, and modify it instantly. That level of flexibility wasn’t possible before. It makes production interactive.” “We’re not replacing creators” From here, 01C plans to onboard major B2B clients, prepare for another fundraising round, and triple the company's size. It's also expanding beyond Europe and the US  According to Dabbagh this is an exciting moment for creativity. "There’s a lot of noise around AI, but the important part is enabling people to tell stories faster — not just one-off outputs, but worlds you can return to and evolve episodically. Another key difference between us and some world-generation models is editability. Some tools generate beautiful results but flatten everything into one object. You can’t extract or manipulate individual assets. We generate true objects you can interact with.” Dabbagh believes that creativity should stay human-driven.  “Autonomy should come from the technical execution side, not storytelling.” Long term, the goal is to remove friction. A creator should say what world they want and see it instantly.  “It keeps them in a flow state, " explained Dabbagh.  “I compare it to painting as a child — there’s no barrier between the idea and the paper. Today, every asset interrupts the creative momentum. We want to eliminate that interruption. It’s not replacing creators. It’s changing the type of effort required.”

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