By Zaheer Kachwala

Feb 4 (Reuters) - Roblox (RBLX) launched an artificial intelligence technology on Wednesday that can generate fully functioning in-game models using natural language ​prompts, as the company aggressively pursues machine learning to attract more developers ‌to its videogame platform.

The technology, dubbed 4D creation, released into beta, and builds upon the company's earlier ‌model which could generate static three dimensional objects. The new model allows users to generate a vehicle, interact with its doors and drive it with accurate physics mechanics.

The move serves to lower the entry barrier to Roblox's developer community, which is user-led and ⁠responsible for the games played ‌on the platform, as the firm looks to spur the creation of new titles and boost its already sprawling user base. ‍The company had more than 150 million average daily active users at the end of the third quarter.

"You want to create an object, that is one path, and for the artist, ​the visuals might be easy, the coding might be hard. The other is, ‌you're a game developer who finds the visuals harder, coding easier. So we're trying to bring all of them together, and our highest goal would be that a player can create inside a game," Roblox's senior vice president of engineering for foundation AI and infrastructure, Anupam Singh told Reuters.

Roblox has been investing heavily in expanding ⁠server capacity to accommodate the sharp growth in ​its player base, while also putting funds towards ​developing AI models and safety - an issue that has come under heavy scrutiny from American state and international governments.

4D creation is a ‍part of Roblox's larger ⁠push to develop AI world models, which can understand the rules and dynamics of an environment so that it can predict and generate future gameplay.

The ⁠announcement comes a week after Alphabet's Google launched an AI model allowing users to simulate and ‌generate a real-world environment through prompts or uploaded images.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala ‌in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

By Deepa Seetharaman

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - OpenAI is launching a mobile app for its coding tool, Codex, in hopes ​of seizing momentum -- and customers -- from its rivals in ‌the AI code-generation space.

OpenAI said it designed its Codex app to make it ‌easy for users to simultaneously manage multiple artificial-intelligence agents over a long period of time. The app can also then use code to do things like gather and analyze information, OpenAI officials said during ⁠a briefing with reporters.

Coding ‌is arguably the most successful application for AI models in recent years. Coding tools are key to ‍helping AI startups attract business customers and the space has grown increasingly competitive.

OpenAI lags behind its rivals in this area, particularly the AI startup ​Anthropic, which has dominated the coding market with its Claude ‌Code tool. Anthropic says Claude Code reached $1 billion in revenue, on an annualized basis, in the six months after it was made available to the public.

The Codex app, released on Monday, is part of OpenAI's redoubled efforts to gain ground. OpenAI said it’s also ⁠tried to make the app more ​user-friendly to help make these advanced capabilities ​more accessible to the masses.

Many observers of the coding space say the code-generation tools aren’t yet good enough ‍to entirely replace ⁠human tech workers. But these tools do make their work significantly faster.

“The models just don’t run out of dopamine,” CEO Sam ⁠Altman said, relaying a recent conversation with a colleague. “They keep trying, they ‌don't run out of motivation.”

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman in ‌San Francisco; Editing by Mark Porter)

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

AI coding platform Replit is raising $400M in a new funding round that would value the company at about $9B, according to Bloomberg, highlighting accelerating investor interest in developer focused AI tools.

The San Francisco based startup last raised $250M in September at a $3B valuation, with backing from Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) AI Futures Fund, Amex Ventures (NYSE:AXP), and a16z. The latest round is being led by Georgian, a Toronto based venture firm, the report said.

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Replit builds AI powered coding agents designed to help developers write, test, and deploy software more quickly. That places it in direct competition with platforms from OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Cursor, which is widely used internally at Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). Google said Replit is demonstrating what is possible with AI agents and plans to work with the company to build tools powered by Gemini for enterprise developers.

The company also rolled out Mobile Apps on Replit for iOS and Android, allowing users to describe an app in natural language and have it built and published automatically.

Investing.com -- Unity Software shares plunged 23% after Google announced access to its interactive world model and creation engine, Project Genie, for U.S. Google AI Ultra subscribers.

William Blair analyst Dylan Becker defended Unity amid the selloff, suggesting market fears about competitive threats to Unity’s Create business are overlooking key advantages of Unity’s platform.

"To us, the price reaction is further evidence of the ’shoot first and ask questions later’ fears attributable to AI uncertainty that have weighed on sentiment throughout the overall software space in recent months," Becker wrote.

Unity’s engine is currently used by approximately 70% of all mobile games. Becker highlighted the platform’s complexity and sophistication, including AI capabilities developed in recent years, and its ability to support the full lifecycle of mobile game development in a unified platform.

The analyst emphasized Unity’s platform-agnostic approach, allowing developers to code once and deploy across more than 20 different platforms. He also pointed to Unity’s cost-effective monetization model, where most users utilize free tiers until reaching $200,000 in annualized revenue.

Becker noted that Google AI Ultra subscriptions start at $250 per user per month, which exceeds Unity Pro’s $210 monthly subscription cost, despite Unity offering greater platform depth and technical capabilities.

The analyst suggested the continued democratization of creative tools could expand the total addressable market for creative professionals while increasing reliance on runtime, discovery, and monetization tools.

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• Recently, Alphabet’s Google unveiled Project Genie, an AI-powered tool that can build, explore, and remix interactive virtual worlds from text and images, sparking concerns about new competition for established game development platforms such as Unity Software.

• While Project Genie raises questions about how AI-first creation tools could reshape workflows, Unity is simultaneously emphasizing partnerships and its own AI integration to position game engines as amplifiers rather than replacements for developers.

• With this context, we’ll examine how Google’s AI world-building push reshapes Unity’s investment narrative around competitive positioning and its evolving AI strategy.

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What Is Unity Software's Investment Narrative?

To own Unity today, you have to believe that its engine, ad stack and cross‑platform tools remain central to how interactive content is built and monetized, even as AI changes how that work gets done. The recent 20–25% selloff after Google’s Project Genie announcement has clearly rattled confidence, but it mostly sharpens existing questions rather than rewriting the story: can Unity move from a US$1.80 billion revenue base toward profitability, justify a still-full Price‑to‑Sales multiple, and execute under a relatively new management team? Near term, key catalysts look unchanged but more charged: proof that AI integrations, partnerships with Google/DeepMind, Coda and even Epic actually drive Create and Grow usage, and that upcoming earnings inch losses lower from the current US$435.53 million level. The flip side is that Genie puts competitive pressure, insider selling and Unity’s high stock volatility more firmly in focus.

However, one risk around competitive AI tools and developer loyalty is easy to underestimate. Despite retreating, Unity Software's shares might still be trading 47% above their fair value. Discover the potential downside here.

Exploring Other Perspectives

Eight Simply Wall St Community fair value estimates span roughly US$24 to US$55 per share, underscoring how far apart individual views can be. Set that against Unity’s sharp post‑Genie price slide and the elevated competitive risk you saw earlier, and you start to see why many market participants are rethinking how resilient the business model really is.

Explore 8 other fair value estimates on Unity Software - why the stock might be worth as much as 90% more than the current price!

Build Your Own Unity Software Narrative

Disagree with this assessment? Create your own narrative in under 3 minutes - extraordinary investment returns rarely come from following the herd.

Shares of video game engine developer Unity Software (NYSE: U) have been sent through the wringer over the past two weeks. In late January, the stock crashed after Alphabet unveiled Project Genie, an AI-powered tech demo that lets users create virtual worlds from text prompts. Then, earlier this week, Unity stock crashed again after the company's outlook fell short of expectations.

Project Genie is impressive, and Unity stock was severely punished partly because investors have grown concerned that AI world generators could make video game engines obsolete. While AI could disrupt many industries, this fear appears misguided.

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Is AI a threat to Unity's business model?

Project Genie can take a text or image prompt and generate a world that the user can navigate for up to 60 seconds. It's incredible, but there are severe limitations. Resolution and frame rates are limited, input lag is a problem, and the generated world may not remain consistent. An article from The Verge noted that, at one point, a section of road unexpectedly turned into grass, along with other visual oddities.

AI technology will certainly improve, but what Project Genie is producing certainly isn't a game. Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg didn't mince words in the fourth-quarter earnings call. "We believe world models are going to be a source of inspiration and assets for creators, but that they're not in any way going to replace game engines. They are complementary, not duplicative," said Bromberg.

Bromberg continued, saying that "Unity is not an interactive video generator; it's a real-time 3D execution platform designed to build once and then run everywhere efficiently and seamlessly. So that's my feeling about Genie."

The idea of creating real-time, AI-generated, interactive video on the fly, while certainly possible, would be an incredibly inefficient and resource-intensive way to make a video game. It would also be non-deterministic. Large language models are statistical and probabilistic, so the same prompt can generate vastly different experiences.

AI is almost certain to play a major role in video game creation, but not in a way that threatens the video game engine industry. World models like Project Genie and other AI tools can generate assets and even write code that powers video game systems, but ultimately, something like the Unity Engine is necessary to tie everything together. AI is an accelerator for video game development, not a replacement for Unity.