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World Labs

Fei-Fei Li's spatial-intelligence company turning words into worlds

World Labs is the San Francisco-based spatial intelligence company founded in early 2024 by Fei-Fei Li — the 'godmother of AI,' creator of ImageNet and co-director of Stanford HAI — with Justin Johnson, Ben Mildenhall and Christoph Lassner. Its mission is to build 'large world models' that perceive, generate and interact with 3D space, which Li argues is as fundamental to intelligence as language. World Labs exited stealth on 13 September 2024 with US$230M in seed funding (two 2024 tranches reported to value it above US$1B) — one of the largest AI first rounds at the time, co-led by a16z, NEA and Radical Ventures. After shipping Marble (its 3D-world generation product, Nov 2025) and a World API (Jan 2026), it raised a US$1B round in February 2026 anchored by a US$200M Autodesk strategic investment, with NVIDIA and AMD among the backers — the reported ~US$5B valuation was never confirmed. In July 2026 it acquired SceniX to enter robotics simulation, and in September 2026 unveiled Atlas, an 'omni' world model.

World Labs logo
Founded
2024 (reported April)
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founders
Fei-Fei Li (CEO); Justin Johnson; Ben Mildenhall; Christoph Lassner
Sector
Spatial intelligence / large world models / 3D generation (physical AI from 2026)
Products
Marble (Nov 2025); World API (Jan 2026); Spark; Atlas (Sep 2026); SceniX (acquired Jul 2026)
Team
~20 at launch; ~60–70 by mid-2026 (third-party estimates)
Total raised
~US$1.23B across two disclosed rounds
Latest valuation
~US$5B (reported, unconfirmed — Feb 2026)
Rounds recorded
2
Total raised
$1.23B
worldlabs.ai

Funding timeline

Every disclosed equity round for World Labs, oldest to newest, with lead and participating investors where reported.

  1. Sep 13, 2024

    Seed

    $230M
    Led by Andreessen HorowitzLed by NEALed by Radical VenturesNVentures (NVIDIA)AMD VenturesIntel CapitalAdobe VenturesDatabricks VenturesMarc BenioffAshton Kutcher

    World Labs' US$230M was not a single cheque but the combined total of two 2024 seed tranches, announced together when the company exited stealth. A first stealth tranche (~Apr 2024) was reported at a ~US$200M valuation with a16z and Radical Ventures; a second (~mid-2024) was led by NEA at a reported valuation above US$1B. The company declined to disclose its valuation. Additional angels (Geoffrey Hinton, Jeff Dean, Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman) and Sanabil / Temasek reported across secondary sources.

    Source ↗

  2. Feb 18, 2026

    Growth round

    $1BLatest
    AutodeskAMDNVIDIAEmerson CollectiveFidelity Management & Research CompanySea

    Doubled the January negotiation figure (Bloomberg reported talks at ~US$5B seeking up to ~US$500M); the company never confirmed a valuation. Autodesk's US$200M strategic investment — the design-software giant's largest startup investment, per its own announcement — anchored the round and came with a strategic-advisor role plus a research collaboration to bring world models into professional 3D workflows. a16z also participated per Bloomberg.

    Source ↗

The story behind the numbers

The godmother of AI and spatial intelligence

Fei-Fei Li built ImageNet, the benchmark that helped seed modern deep learning, then led AI/ML at Google Cloud and co-directed Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI. She frames 'spatial intelligence' — the ability to perceive, reason about and act within 3D space — as AI's next frontier, as fundamental to intelligence as language. Her November 2025 manifesto, 'From Words to Worlds,' argued that today's LLMs lack understanding of the physically, geometrically and dynamically complex world, and that world models are 'the defining challenge of the next decade.'

From research lab to product company

World Labs' first product, Marble, shipped on 12 November 2025 after a September beta, letting anyone generate persistent, high-fidelity 3D worlds from text, images, video or coarse 3D layouts — exportable for tools like Unreal and Unity across freemium tiers. A programmable World API followed on 21 January 2026, signalling the shift from demo to developer platform. In July 2026 World Labs acquired SceniX and published early real-to-sim-to-real results — policies trained entirely in simulation transferred across robot platforms and ran for hours on hardware. On 1 September 2026 it unveiled Atlas, an 'omni' world model pretrained from scratch for generation, reconstruction and simulation, entering early access with select partners.

The world-model race

World Labs competes with Google DeepMind's Genie, NVIDIA's Cosmos platform and startups such as Decart and Odyssey — with Marble differentiated by generating persistent, downloadable 3D environments rather than on-the-fly video. Two of its largest rivals' backers, NVIDIA and AMD, are also World Labs investors, reflecting the sector's dual partner-and-competitor dynamic. Yann LeCun's AMI Labs raised concurrently at a ~US$3.5B valuation, underscoring surging appetite for physical/spatial AI. The valuation logic from ~US$1B to a reported ~US$5B in ~17 months rests on syndicate confidence and product momentum — Marble's GA, World API adoption and the robotics push — rather than disclosed revenue.

A shifting investor base

The 2024 seed assembled a signature academic-Silicon-Valley syndicate: VC co-leads a16z, NEA and Radical Ventures, corporate VCs (NVentures, AMD, Intel, Adobe, Databricks) and a who's-who of individual angels. The February 2026 round marked a structural shift toward strategic and institutional capital with direct commercial stakes in 3D and physical AI: Autodesk anchored with US$200M and an advisory seat, NVIDIA and AMD doubled down, and Fidelity brought large asset-manager money. The arc — from star-founder angel enthusiasm to mission-critical industry co-investment — tracks World Labs' own evolution from research lab to commercial platform vendor with a robotics roadmap.

More in the Atlas

World Labs's lead investors are profiled in the Investor Atlas when their firms join the directory. Track who backs every frontier AI round on the Funding Leaderboard.