Key Points:
- World Labs secured $1 billion to develop “spatial intelligence” technology.
- Major investors include chip giants AMD and Nvidia, plus Autodesk.
- The startup is reportedly valued at approximately $5 billion.
- Fei-Fei Li aims to move AI beyond 2D text into 3D reasoning.
Prominent computer scientist Fei-Fei Li has secured a massive payday for her new startup, World Labs. The company announced on Wednesday that it raised $1 billion in its latest funding round. This cash injection will help the team accelerate its work on “spatial intelligence,” a cutting-edge field that teaches computers how to understand and interact with the three-dimensional world.
The investment round attracted some of the biggest names in technology and finance. Semiconductor heavyweights AMD and Nvidia joined the deal, along with Fidelity Management & Research Company and Emerson Collective. Software company Autodesk also played a major role, investing $200 million directly and agreeing to serve as an adviser to the startup.
While World Labs did not publicly state its current value, reports from Bloomberg in January suggested the company was discussing a valuation of around $5 billion. This is a rapid rise for a company that Li, often called the “godmother of AI,” launched in September 2024 with an initial $230 million.
The company is trying to solve a specific problem. Most current AI models rely on 2D data, like flat images or text on a screen. Spatial intelligence changes this by training computers to reason about 3D space. World Labs is building “foundational models” that can perceive the physical environment, generate 3D assets, and interact with objects just like a human would.
This technology has huge potential for the future. Li believes these models will be essential for powering augmented reality, virtual reality, and advanced robotics. If a robot can truly understand depth and space, it can navigate the real world much more effectively than current machines.
World Labs is not alone in this race. Google DeepMind is also working on similar “world models,” such as its Genie family, which can simulate 3D environments. World Labs has already teased its own competitor, a multimodal model called Marble, which creates 3D worlds from simple text or image prompts.
