- Fei-Fei Li has secured $230 million for her new startup, World Labs, which she co-founded with three colleagues.
- Targeting a 2025 release, World Labs is developing “large world models” to assist professionals in various fields. While its valuation remains undisclosed, its innovative approach could revolutionise AI’s interaction with the physical world.
OUR TAKE
Li’s reputation as a trailblazer in AI and her track record with ImageNet lend significant credibility to World Labs. Her focus on “spatial intelligence” promises to push the boundaries of what AI can do, especially in fields like AR/VR and robotics, where understanding 3D environments is crucial.This venture’s potential to revolutionise how professionals in various industries work with AI highlights its importance.
-Tacy Ding, BTW reporter
What happened
Fei-Fei Li, a prominent researcher in artificial intelligence, has successfully secured $230 million in funding for a new startup she co-founded with three colleagues. The company, known as World Labs, aims to advance AI technology to interpret and interact with the three-dimensional physical world. This ambitious project received its initial backing from notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Radical Ventures, with additional support from AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, and Nvidia’s NVentures.
World Labs is targeting the release of its first product by 2025, focusing on creating AI models capable of comprehending and engaging with complex three-dimensional environments. The company is developing what it refers to as “large world models,” which are intended to assist professionals such as artists, designers, developers, and engineers in their work. Although the company has not disclosed its current valuation, its innovative approach is set to potentially revolutionise how AI interacts with the physical world.
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Why it’s important
Li, recognised as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, led AI initiatives at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018. She has also served on Twitter’s board of directors and has advised policymakers, including at the White House.
The Stanford University professor is widely known as the “godmother of AI,” a title that contrasts with the three “godfathers” of AI who won the 2018 Turing Award, the computing world’s highest accolade, for their groundbreaking contributions to AI technology.
Li made her name in AI by developing ImageNet, a large-scale image dataset that played a crucial role in advancing computer vision technologies, enabling them to reliably identify objects for the first time.
Reuters previously reported that Li was working in stealth mode on an AI startup capable of transforming ideas into 3D environments. World Labs’ co-founders include computer vision researchers Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall. While commercially available generative AI models can create impressive text and images, World Labs focuses on “spatial intelligence,” which involves understanding how the 3D world operates. According to Li, spatial intelligence models could potentially be applied in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) or robotics in the future.
