Indian AI engineer builds 'world model', claims it's cheaper & faster than others

Sam Pasupalak, an Indian engineer who's the cofounder and CEO of Skyfall AI, has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model, SKY-001, that handles complex engineering tasks. In a social media post on Monday, Pasupalak claimed the model outperforms frontier AI models such as GPT-6 Astra in terms of speed and cost.

SKY-001 is a type of “world model,” which analyses the physical and spatial properties of the real world and uses inputs (text, image, etc.) to predict what happens next.

How does the model work


SKY-001 is an engineering model that uses computer-aided design (CAD) and building information modelling (BIM).


“SKY-001 lets you dream a physical object before you build it,” Pasupalak’s post on X said. It is meant to serve as a base model for complex physical design, covering areas such as printed circuit board (PCB) design, aerospace engineering, and molecule design.

It turns a 2D image or text prompt into several rough 3D assets at once, so users can try different visual directions and choose the best starting point before working on details. SKY-001 helps to plan a design in stages instead of generating the entire thing at once.

Performance


Pasupalak claims the model is between 51 and 125 times faster than the frontier models tested. He also says it is 150 to 210 times cheaper.

In the benchmark test posted by the company, SKY-001 costs $0.005 per sample, compared with $0.75 for GPT-6 Astra. It scored 79.7 percent on the Intersection over Union (IoU) metric, compared with 79.1% for GPT-6 Astra. IoU measures how closely an AI model’s predicted result overlaps with a ground-truth design (a verified, real-world design).

The figures come from Skyfall AI’s own tests and have not been independently verified.

Before Skyfall AI, Pasupalak co-founded Maluuba in 2011 and served as its CEO. The startup was later acquired by Microsoft.