AI Pioneer Fei-Fei Li Launches $1 Billion Spatial Intelligence Startup

Andreessen Horowitz-Backed 'Godmother Of AI' Fei-Fei Li Quietly Builds $1B Startup In 4 Months

Fei-Fei Li, a prominent figure in the field of artificial intelligence and co-director of Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute, has swiftly established a billion-dollar startup, adding to the intense competition in the tech industry to commercialize AI. What Happened: In just four months, Li, who is often referred to as the "godmother of AI," founded a company named World Labs, reported Financial Times on Wednesday. The startup has already secured significant funding from prominent tech investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and AI fund Radical Ventures, valuing the business at over $1 billion. World Labs recently completed a funding round, raising approximately $100 million. The startup is focused on developing "spatial intelligence" in AI by creating human-like processing of visual data, a field Li discussed in a TED talk in April. Investor interest in AI has surged following OpenAI's launch of the ChatGPT chatbot in November 2022, with over $27 billion being invested in U.S. AI startups in the last three months alone, accounting for about half of all startup funding in that period. See Also: Why Key Apple, Nvidia Supplier TSMC's Shares Are Plunging In Wednesday's Premarket Li, who is on partial leave from Stanford, where she co-directs the Human-Centered AI Institute, has contributed to the development of ImageNet, a large image dataset that advanced computer vision technology. Why It Matters: The rapid valuation of World Labs underscores the intense interest and investment in the AI sector. This trend is not isolated. Recently, Jeff Bezos-backed Anthropic and Menlo Ventures launched a $100 million fund to support early-stage AI startups, increasing competition with OpenAI. Bezos and Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group led a $300 million funding round for Skild AI, a startup developing a "general-purpose brain" for AI systems. This investment highlights the growing focus on foundational AI technologies. Moreover, SoftBank's acquisition of Graphcore, a UK-based chipmaker, further emphasizes the importance of AI infrastructure. Earlier this month, private equity firm Index Ventures secured over $2 billion for AI-focused investments, reflecting the bullish sentiment in the AI investment climate. Read Next: Jim Cramer Says If You Sell This Chinese EV Stock Now, 'Some Clown' Will Be 'Real Positive About It,' Wait Until 'All That Stuff Happens' Image Via Shutterstock This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

'Godmother of A.I.' Fei-Fei Li Has Created a $1B Startup in Less Than 4 Months

"If we want to advance A.I. beyond its current capabilities, we want more than A.I. that can see and talk. We want A.I. that can do." In January, A.I. pioneer Fei-Fei Li began a two-year leave from her position at Stanford University and updated her LinkedIn to describe her current work as "something new." That new venture has been revealed to be a startup called World Labs that has already achieved a $1 billion valuation merely four months after launching, as reported by the Financial Times. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters The computer scientist's startup reportedly counts venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures among its investors. Andreessen Horowitz, which is betting big on A.I. by setting aside billions of dollars for the technology, and Radical Ventures, a machine learning-focused VC firm, belong to a growing group of investors eager to take advantage of the A.I. revolution. In the second quarter, VC funding for A.I. companies doubled from a year ago to $24 billion, according to Crunchbase. Li, who is often dubbed the "Godmother of A.I." for her contributions towards the technology's development, is a partner at Radical Ventures and in 2016 spent several months as Andreessen Horowitz's professor in residence. She did not respond to requests for comment from Observer. Li co-directs the Human-Centered A.I. Institute at Stanford, which aims to utilize generative A.I. to improve the human condition. She has counted the likes of Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI who headed A.I. efforts at Tesla (TSLA) and recently launched an education-focused A.I. startup, among her students. Before joining the university in 2009, her work at Princeton University led to the breakthrough development of ImageNet, a database of 15 million images used to visually train computers. Li also previously acted as a Google vice president and chief scientist of A.I. and machine learning at Google Cloud between 2017 and 2018, in addition to having served as a board director at Twitter and an advisor to the White House on tech policies. What is spatial intelligence? Through her new company, Li is now working on creating spatial intelligence -- a concept she delved into during an April TED Talk. "If we want to advance A.I. beyond its current capabilities, we want more than A.I. that can see and talk. We want A.I. that can do," said Li during the talk. To illustrate the concept of spatial intelligence, she pointed to an image of a cat pushing over a glass. "In the last split second, your brain looked at the geometry of this glass, its place in 3D space, its relationship with the table, the cat and everything else, and you can predict what's going to happen next," she explained. "The urge to act is innate to all beings with spatial intelligence, which links perception with action." Taking on such innovative projects requires funding, something that A.I. academics and the institutions they work for often lack. "We do not have the compute resources, we do not have the data, and more and more of our talent is going into the private sector," Li told Bloomberg last year while discussing the inability of universities to train expensive A.I. models. Noting an imbalance in funding between the public and private sectors, the latter of which is flush with venture capital for A.I. startups, Li said she had met with President Joe Biden last summer and urged for an aggressive push in investments towards public A.I. projects and research. In the case of World Labs, no push is needed. The startup has held two funding rounds since April and raised about $100 million during the most recent one, according to the Financial Times.

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li reportedly raises $100M for new spatial intelligence startup

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li reportedly raises $100M for new spatial intelligence startup World Labs, a new startup founded by prominent artificial intelligence researcher Fei-Fei Li, has reportedly raised about $100 million in funding. The Financial Times reported the investment today. According to the paper's sources, World Labs raised the capital over two funding rounds, the most recent of which valued the company at more than $1 billion. The company's investors are said to include Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures, a Toronto-based venture fund where Li is a scientific partner. Li reportedly launched World Labs in April while on partial leave from Stanford University, where she is the co-director of the Human-Centered AI Institute. She earlier led another Stanford machine learning lab known as SAIL for five years. In 2006, Li created ImageNet, a groundbreaking AI training dataset that laid the foundation for many subsequent machine learning advances. The dataset contains millions of images with annotations that describe the objects they depict. Researchers have used ImageNet as the basis of numerous machine learning projects including AlexNet, an early computer vision algorithm seen as a key predecessor to modern AI models. World Labs, Li's new company, is reportedly developing a model with so-called spatial intelligence. A venture capitalist familiar with the project told the Financial Times that the model will have the ability to understand "the dimensions of objects, where things are and what they do." In May, Reuters reported that World Labs' AI will also be capable of "advanced reasoning." Li discussed the applications of spatial intelligence in a TED talk earlier this year. According to the researcher, the technology could enable robots to more efficiently navigate physical spaces. A hospital, for example, could use an autonomous vehicle with spatial intelligence capabilities to transport medical supplies. During the talk, Li said the technology can also ease the task of programming industrial robots. She pointed to a recent academic project in which researchers showed that an AI-powered robotic arm can perform tasks based on natural language instructions. That project used a large language model to process users' prompts. Today's report didn't specify whether the AI that World Labs is developing is also an LLM or uses a different architecture. It's unclear what use cases the company will target with the software. The cost of developing an advanced AI model can run into the nine figures in some cases. Hardware expenses, notably graphics card purchases, usually account for much of the development budget. As a result, it's likely that a sizable portion of the $100 million that World Labs has reportedly raised will go towards AI infrastructure. The company may seek to raise significantly more funding down the road to support its research efforts. OpenAI, Anthropic PBC, Mistral AI and other LLM startups have collectively raised tens of billions of dollars from investors over the past few years.

The 'godmother of AI' just built a $1 billion startup

At a time when women are disappearing from the tech industry, one AI visionary is making more of an impact than ever. The so-called "godmother of AI," Dr. Fei-Fei Li, has built an AI startup called World Labs that's already worth $1 billion, according to The Financial Times. Li has been tight-lipped about her plans for the startup, but unnamed sources in May told Reuters that the company will focus on developing technology capable of human-like visual data processing and advanced reasoning. "Curiosity urges us to create machines to see just as intelligently as we can, if not better," Li said during a Ted talk in April. "And if we want to advance AI beyond its current capabilities, we want more than AI that can see and talk. We want AI that can do." Andreessen Horowitz and the AI fund Radical Ventures are funders of World Labs. Li is renowned for her contributions to AI. She invented ImageNet, a dataset used for advancing computer vision that many see as a catalyst for the AI boom. She consults with policymakers as they work to set up guardrails for the technology, and was named one of 12 national AI research resource task force members by the U.S. White House in 2021. She's also less pessimistic about AI's potential for harm than other leaders in the field. In an interview at Bloomberg Technology Summit in May, Li said she thinks the pervasive "doom and gloom" about generative artificial intelligence is overblown. "There's so many ways we can use this to make people's life better, work better," she told Bloomberg's Emily Cheng.

The 'godmother of AI' has a new startup already worth $1 billion

The startup has had two funding rounds, the latest was about $100 million, and it's backed by Andreessen Horowitz and the AI fund Radical Ventures (which Li joined as a partner last year). Li founded World Labs while on partial leave from Stanford, where she co-directs the university's Human-Centered AI Institute. In a Ted Talk in April, Li further explained the field of research her startup will work on advancing, which involves algorithms capable of realistically extrapolating images and text into three-dimensional environments and acting on those predictions, using a concept known as "spatial intelligence." This could bolster work in various fields such as robotics, augmented reality, virtual reality, and computer vision. If these capabilities continue to advance in the ambitious ways Li plans, it has the potential to transform industries like healthcare and manufacturing.