Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs Secures $230 Million to Revolutionize Spatially Intelligent AI

Fei-Fei Li, renowned AI researcher and often referred to as the “Godmother of AI,” has announced that her startup, World Labs, has raised $230 million in funding to develop AI technology capable of understanding and interacting with the three-dimensional physical world.

The funding was co-led by prominent venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Radical Ventures. Additional investors include industry heavyweights such as Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce; Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn; Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google; and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. Corporate investors like AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, and NVIDIA’s NVentures also participated in the round.

Pioneering Large World Models

World Labs aims to move beyond the two-dimensional capabilities of current AI models by developing Large World Models (LWMs). These models are designed to perceive, generate, and interact with the 3D world, enabling AI systems to have spatial intelligence akin to human understanding.

“The images and videos you’ve seen so far coming out of generative AI models do not give you enough of the whole sense of how a 3D world is built,” Li said in an interview. “The way we understand the structure of the world, imagined or real, will fundamentally be a piece of this AI puzzle.”

A Stellar Team of Founders

Co-founded by Li and three other esteemed computer vision researchers—Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall—World Labs brings together expertise from leading institutions like Stanford University, where Li serves as a professor and co-director of the Human-Centered AI Institute.

The team plans to create AI models capable of understanding objects, places, and interactions in 3D space and time. This technology has the potential to revolutionize various industries, including augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), robotics, gaming, and creative arts.

Investor Confidence Amidst AI Advancements

Despite concerns about an AI “bubble,” investor enthusiasm for World Labs underscores the ongoing interest in groundbreaking AI technologies. Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, noted that World Labs’ customers could include game companies and movie studios looking to leverage advanced 3D AI models.

The startup’s mission aligns with Li’s long-standing vision to empower AI systems with a deeper understanding of the physical world. By focusing on spatial intelligence, World Labs aims to overcome limitations of current AI models that often produce “hallucinations” or inaccuracies, such as rendering hands with an incorrect number of fingers.

Continuing Impact on the AI Community

Fei-Fei Li’s contributions to the AI field are significant. She is best known for creating ImageNet, a large-scale image dataset that propelled advancements in computer vision and deep learning. Li has also served in leadership roles at Google Cloud and on the board of Twitter. In addition to her work with World Labs, she continues to advocate for diversity in STEM and AI through the nonprofit organization AI4ALL.

Looking Ahead

With a team of 20 employees based in San Francisco, World Labs is currently in stealth mode but plans to reveal more about its technology in the coming months. The startup aims to bridge the gap between research and practical applications, potentially offering new tools for artists, designers, developers, and engineers to expand the capabilities of generative AI.

“What is a really hard problem to work on in AI? My own answer is spatial intelligence—a technology that could empower and enable countless possible use cases in creation, design, learning, AR/VR, robotics, and beyond,” Li shared in a recent social media post.

As World Labs moves forward, the AI community eagerly anticipates how its innovations will shape the future of spatially intelligent AI and its applications across various sectors.