Fei-Fei Li, the renowned AI pioneer and Stanford professor known as the “Godmother of AI,” has launched a new startup called World Labs. The company has emerged from stealth mode after raising $230 million in funding from prominent investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Nvidia’s venture arm.
World Labs is developing what it calls "large world models" (LWMs), which go beyond the current capabilities of language and image generation models. These LWMs aim to create and manipulate 3D virtual spaces with realistic physics and semantics. The goal is to enable computers to perceive and reason about the physical world in three dimensions, much like humans do.
“Turning vision into reasoning, generation, and eventual interaction involves understanding the physical structure and dynamics of the world,” Li said, emphasizing the importance of spatial intelligence in advancing AI capabilities.
Very excited for the launch of @theworldlabs!
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) September 13, 2024
I spent a lot of time with Fei-Fei and Justin during my PhD, which I look back on very fondly - Fei-Fei was my advisor and our fearless leader, Justin and I wrote papers together and the three of us built the first version of CS231n.… https://t.co/BD0yguJyY9 pic.twitter.com/9bhChfPczH
The startup was co-founded by Li alongside AI experts Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall—all recognized for their significant contributions to computer vision and graphics. The team plans to have their first product ready by 2025, initially focusing on generating virtual 3D spaces where users can control elements like physics and object interactions.
World Labs has attracted substantial investment from leading venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures. Individual investors comprise a who’s who of the tech industry: Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder), Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), Jeff Dean (Google DeepMind chief scientist), Geoffrey Hinton (machine learning pioneer), and actor-turned-venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher. Nvidia’s venture arm and other notable investors like Adobe Ventures and Databricks Ventures have also backed the company.
Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and an early investor in World Labs, expressed high confidence in the team. “I’ve been investing for almost 10 years, and this is the single best team I’ve ever run across,” he said. Casado is so committed to the venture that he has taken a part-time role within the company to assist in bridging research and product development.
The technology developed by World Labs could have wide-ranging applications across industries such as gaming, film, design, engineering, and robotics. By enabling AI to generate and manipulate virtual 3D environments complete with physics and semantics, the company aims to empower professionals like artists, designers, developers, and engineers to innovate in ways previously unattainable.
Li is well-known for her work on ImageNet, a large-scale image database that significantly advanced the field of computer vision and deep learning. Her new venture reflects her long-standing interest in spatial intelligence and represents the next frontier in AI development.
“AI has made significant strides with language models, but spatial intelligence is a fundamental aspect of human cognition that we need to replicate in AI,” Li stated. “We believe that artificial intelligence will help humans build better worlds.”
World Labs is still in its early stages, with a lot of work ahead before their first product launch in 2025. But with their impressive funding, high-profile team, and ambitious goals, they've certainly grabbed the AI world's attention.