AI Pioneer Fei-Fei Li Raises $230 Million for New AI Startup

'AI godmother' Fei-Fei Li raises $230 million to launch AI startup

Fei-Fei Li, a prominent AI researcher, has raised $230 million for World Labs, a startup focused on spatial intelligence. The funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Radical Ventures. World Labs aims to develop AI technology that understands the 3D physical world, with potential applications in AR/VR and robotics.Fei-Fei Li, a leading artificial intelligence researcher, has raised $230 million for a startup she and three colleagues founded to make AI technology that can understand how the three-dimensional physical world works, the company said on Friday. Initial funding for World Labs was led jointly by Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates and Radical Ventures. Other investors included AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and Nvidia's NVentures. World Labs declined to share its valuation. Li, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, led AI at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018, served on Twitter's board of directors and has done stints advising policymakers, including at the White House. The Stanford University professor is widely known as the "godmother of AI," a moniker alluding to the three "godfather" winners of the 2018 Turing Award, the computing world's top prize, for their breakthroughs in AI technology. Li made her name in AI by developing ImageNet, a large-scale image dataset that helped usher in a generation of computer vision technologies that could identify objects reliably for the first time. Reuters previously reported that Li was working in stealth mode on an AI startup that could render ideas into 3D environments. World Labs' other founders are computer vision researchers Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner and Ben Mildenhall. While commercially available generative AI models can produce dazzling text and photo outputs, Worlds Labs focuses on "spatial intelligence," or the ability to reason how the 3D world works, Li told Reuters. Spatial intelligence models could be used in the future for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) or robotics, she said. "The images and videos that you have 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, along with Mildenhall. This sense is fundamental to unlocking broader reasoning capabilities in AI systems, she noted. This would avoid the rendering of "hallucinations" like hands with the wrong number of fingers. "The way we understand the structure of the world, imagined or real, will fundamentally be a piece of this AI puzzle," Li said. The San Francisco-based startup, with 20 employees, will train foundation models that its founders refer to as "large world models" or "LWMs." Li said a combination of synthetic and real-world data will be used to train the models. The models will use the same transformer-based architecture that serves as the basis for OpenAI's viral ChatGPT chatbot, Li said. However, the transformer would not be the "be-all and end-all" of their models, she said, suggesting they will incorporate other elements as well. Li will continue her work at Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute while building the startup. World Labs is Li's second go-around in entrepreneurship. As a Princeton University student, Li borrowed money to buy a dry cleaning business for her parents and spent her weekends working there, she said in her memoirs.

'AI Godmother' Fei-Fei Li Raises $230 Million to Launch AI Startup

(Reuters) - Fei-Fei Li, a leading artificial intelligence researcher, has raised $230 million for a startup she and three colleagues founded to make AI technology that can understand how the three-dimensional physical world works, the company said on Friday. Initial funding for World Labs was led jointly by Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates and Radical Ventures. Other investors included AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and Nvidia's NVentures. World Labs declined to share its valuation. Li, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, led AI at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018, served on Twitter's board of directors and has done stints advising policymakers, including at the White House. The Stanford University professor is widely known as the "godmother of AI," a moniker alluding to the three "godfather" winners of the 2018 Turing Award, the computing world's top prize, for their breakthroughs in AI technology. Li made her name in AI by developing ImageNet, a large-scale image dataset that helped usher in a generation of computer vision technologies that could identify objects reliably for the first time. Reuters previously reported that Li was working in stealth mode on an AI startup that could render ideas into 3D environments. World Labs' other founders are computer vision researchers Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner and Ben Mildenhall. While commercially available generative AI models can produce dazzling text and photo outputs, Worlds Labs focuses on "spatial intelligence," or the ability to reason how the 3D world works, Li told Reuters. Spatial intelligence models could be used in the future for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) or robotics, she said. "The images and videos that you have 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, along with Mildenhall. This sense is fundamental to unlocking broader reasoning capabilities in AI systems, she noted. This would avoid the rendering of "hallucinations" like hands with the wrong number of fingers. "The way we understand the structure of the world, imagined or real, will fundamentally be a piece of this AI puzzle," Li said. The San Francisco-based startup, with 20 employees, will train foundation models that its founders refer to as "large world models" or "LWMs." Li said a combination of synthetic and real-world data will be used to train the models. The models will use the same transformer-based architecture that serves as the basis for OpenAI's viral ChatGPT chatbot, Li said. However, the transformer would not be the "be-all and end-all" of their models, she said, suggesting they will incorporate other elements as well. Li will continue her work at Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute while building the startup. World Labs is Li's second go-around in entrepreneurship. As a Princeton University student, Li borrowed money to buy a dry cleaning business for her parents and spent her weekends working there, she said in her memoirs. (Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco and Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Richard Chang)

'AI godmother' Fei-Fei Li raises $230 million to launch AI startup

Sept 13 (Reuters) - Fei-Fei Li, a leading artificial intelligence researcher, has raised $230 million for a startup she and three colleagues founded to make AI technology that can understand how the three-dimensional physical world works, the company said on Friday. Initial funding for World Labs was led jointly by Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates and Radical Ventures. Other investors included AMD (AMD.O), opens new tab Ventures, Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab Capital and Nvidia's (NVDA.O), opens new tab NVentures. Advertisement · Scroll to continue World Labs declined to share its valuation. Li, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, led AI at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018, served on Twitter's board of directors and has done stints advising policymakers, including at the White House. The Stanford University professor is widely known as the "godmother of AI," a moniker alluding to the three "godfather" winners of the 2018 Turing Award, the computing world's top prize, for their breakthroughs in AI technology. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Li made her name in AI by developing ImageNet, a large-scale image dataset that helped usher in a generation of computer vision technologies that could identify objects reliably for the first time. Reuters previously reported that Li was working in stealth mode on an AI startup that could render ideas into 3D environments. World Labs' other founders are computer vision researchers Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner and Ben Mildenhall. While commercially available generative AI models can produce dazzling text and photo outputs, Worlds Labs focuses on "spatial intelligence," or the ability to reason how the 3D world works, Li told Reuters. Spatial intelligence models could be used in the future for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) or robotics, she said. "The images and videos that you have 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, along with Mildenhall. This sense is fundamental to unlocking broader reasoning capabilities in AI systems, she noted. This would avoid the rendering of "hallucinations" like hands with the wrong number of fingers. "The way we understand the structure of the world, imagined or real, will fundamentally be a piece of this AI puzzle," Li said. The San Francisco-based startup, with 20 employees, will train foundation models that its founders refer to as "large world models" or "LWMs." Li said a combination of synthetic and real-world data will be used to train the models. The models will use the same transformer-based architecture that serves as the basis for OpenAI's viral ChatGPT chatbot, Li said. However, the transformer would not be the "be-all and end-all" of their models, she said, suggesting they will incorporate other elements as well. Li will continue her work at Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute while building the startup. World Labs is Li's second go-around in entrepreneurship. As a Princeton University student, Li borrowed money to buy a dry cleaning business for her parents and spent her weekends working there, she said in her memoirs. Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco and Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Richard Chang Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Anna Tong Thomson Reuters Anna Tong is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where she reports on the technology industry. She joined Reuters in 2023 after working at the San Francisco Standard as a data editor. Tong previously worked at technology startups as a product manager and at Google where she worked in user insights and helped run a call center. Tong graduated from Harvard University.

'AI godmother' Fei-Fei Li raises $230 million to launch AI startup

Li, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, led AI at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018, served on Twitter's board of directors and has done stints advising policymakers, including at the White House. The Stanford University professor is widely known as the "godmother of AI," a moniker alluding to the three "godfather" winners of the 2018 Turing Award, the computing world's top prize, for their breakthroughs in AI technology. Li made her name in AI by developing ImageNet, a large-scale image dataset that helped usher in a generation of computer vision technologies that could identify objects reliably for the first time. Reuters previously reported that Li was working in stealth mode on an AI startup that could render ideas into 3D environments. World Labs' other founders are computer vision researchers Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner and Ben Mildenhall. While commercially available generative AI models can produce dazzling text and photo outputs, Worlds Labs focuses on "spatial intelligence," or the ability to reason how the 3D world works, Li told Reuters. Spatial intelligence models could be used in the future for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) or robotics, she said. "The images and videos that you have 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, along with Mildenhall. This sense is fundamental to unlocking broader reasoning capabilities in AI systems, she noted. This would avoid the rendering of "hallucinations" like hands with the wrong number of fingers. "The way we understand the structure of the world, imagined or real, will fundamentally be a piece of this AI puzzle," Li said. The San Francisco-based startup, with 20 employees, will train foundation models that its founders refer to as "large world models" or "LWMs." Li said a combination of synthetic and real-world data will be used to train the models. The models will use the same transformer-based architecture that serves as the basis for OpenAI's viral ChatGPT chatbot, Li said. However, the transformer would not be the "be-all and end-all" of their models, she said, suggesting they will incorporate other elements as well. Li will continue her work at Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute while building the startup. World Labs is Li's second go-around in entrepreneurship. As a Princeton University student, Li borrowed money to buy a dry cleaning business for her parents and spent her weekends working there, she said in her memoirs. (Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco and Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Richard Chang)

Fei Fei Li's World Labs comes out of stealth with $230M in funding | TechCrunch

Fei Fei Li, the Stanford professor many deem the "Godmother of AI," has raised $230 million for her new startup, World Labs, from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures. World Labs is valued at over $1 billion, and the capital was raised over two rounds spaced a couple of months apart, TechCrunch reported in August. Li's company, which hopes to have its first product ready in 2025, aims to build AI models that understand and interact with the 3D world. World Labs is developing what it calls "large world models" that will be used by professionals such as artists, designers, developers, and engineers. Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told Wired that World Labs' customers could include game companies or movie studios.

World Labs, Founded by Fei-Fei Li, Raises $230M to Develop Spatially Intelligent AI

The company's mission is to build Large World Models (LWMs) that can perceive, generate, and interact with the 3D world, moving beyond the 2D capabilities of current AI models. Fei-Fei Li, a leading artificial intelligence researcher, has raised $230 million for World Labs, a startup she co-founded with three colleagues to develop AI technology capable of understanding the 3D physical world. The funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures, with additional support from industry leaders such as Marc Benioff, Eric Schmidt, and Geoffrey Hinton. The company plans to focus initially on generating and editing 3D worlds with realistic physics and semantics, offering creative users new tools to expand the potential of generative AI. The company's mission is to build Large World Models (LWMs) that can perceive, generate, and interact with the 3D world, moving beyond the 2D capabilities of current AI models. Co-founded by Li, along with Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall, World Labs seeks to enable AI systems with spatial intelligence akin to that of humans. The founders and their team of experts in computer vision and graphics plan to create AI models capable of understanding objects, places, and interactions in 3D space and time. "What is a really 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," posted Li on X. The team at World Labs believes AI will empower people and further humanity's progress, following centuries of technological advancements. The company aims to bridge the gap between research and applications, and will reveal more about its technology in the coming months. Li, often referred to as the 'Godmother of AI,' is a renowned computer scientist and AI researcher who has made significant contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. Born in China and immigrating to the United States as a teenager, Li's academic journey led her to earn a BA in Physics from Princeton University and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Caltech. As a professor at Stanford University, Li holds several prestigious positions, including Sequoia Capital Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute. Her research interests span cognitively inspired AI, machine learning, computer vision, and AI applications in healthcare. Li's impact extends beyond academia, having served as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud and as a board member at Twitter. She is also a passionate advocate for diversity in STEM and AI, co-founding AI4ALL, a nonprofit organization with a mission to increase inclusion in AI education

The 'godmother of AI' just raised $230 million for her AI startup

As venture deals drop for women-founded tech companies, the "godmother of AI" is building a billion dollar artificial intelligence startup that just raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Fei-Fei Li, a pioneer of the AI industry, has raised $230 million for her AI startup, World Labs, which launched on Friday. The startup, which defines itself as "a spatial intelligence AI company," was founded by Lei and fellow "world-renowned" technologists Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall. The $230 million funding was led by investors at Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures, the startup said. Other investors include Salesforce (CRM) co-founder Marc Benioff, LinkedIn (MSFT) co-founder Reid Hoffman, and chipmaker Nvidia's (NVDA) venture capital arm, NVentures. The spatial intelligence startup plans to build "large world models," or LWMs, that use data such as images to generate 3D "worlds" that users can interact with and control. World Labs says the models can be useful for creatives and professionals such as artists and engineers. "We aim to lift AI models from the 2D plane of pixels to full 3D worlds - both virtual and real - endowing them with spatial intelligence as rich as our own," World Labs said. In July, it was reported that World Labs was already worth $1 billion. Li's contributions to the AI industry include inventing ImageNet, a dataset used to advance computer vision and in deep learning, that is considered a catalyst for the current AI boom. She is also co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute, the former director of Stanford's AI Lab, former vice president and chief scientist of AI/ML at Google (GOOGL) and Google Cloud, and co-founder and chair of non-profit AI4ALL. Li joined the government's Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board in April, where she and dozens of other industry leaders will advise the Department of Homeland Security on preventing harm while implementing AI in critical infrastructure such as the power grid and transportation.

AI Pioneer Fei-Fei Li Raises $230 Million for New Startup World Labs

Artificial intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li has raised $230 million from a star-studded list of investors for a new AI startup called World Labs, which officially launches Friday. The company aims to build software that can use images and other data to make decisions about the three-dimensional world, building what it calls "large world models." The funding is a sign of investors' continued appetite for technology that pushes the boundaries of AI, as well as the draw of the field's biggest names.

Fei-Fei Li's Startup Raises $230 Million in Funding

Artificial intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li has raised $230 million from a star-studded list of investors for a new AI startup called World Labs, which officially launches Friday. Dr. Fei-Fei Li joins Caroline Hyde on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

AI Startup World Labs Launches With $230M From Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia's Venture Arm

It was reported just last month that the Stanford, California-based company had raised a pair of financing rounds two months apart, and that the latest valued the company at over $1 billion. World Labs is co-founded by artificial intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li, commonly referred to as the "godmother of AI." She previously has led AI at Google Cloud and is a co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She has spent much of her time trying to solve the issues surrounding building Large World Models for AI that can perceive and interact with the 3D world. "We aim to lift AI models from the 2D plane of pixels to full 3D worlds -- both virtual and real -- endowing them with spatial intelligence as rich as our own," the company said on its site announcing its launch. "Human spatial intelligence evolved over millennia; but in this time of extraordinary progress, we see the opportunity to imbue AI with this ability in the near term." The round is just the latest huge raise by an AI startup -- once again showing investors' insatiable appetite for the technology. Of course, none of that even comes close to the reported $6.5 billion OpenAI reportedly is in talks to raise at a mind-blowing $150 billion valuation.

World Labs Raises $230 Million to Build Spatially Intelligent AI | PYMNTS.com

World Labs, a newly formed company, said Friday (Sept. 13) that it has raised $230 million to build large world models (LWMs) that "perceive, generate and interact with the 3D world." "We aim to lift AI models from the 2D plane of pixels to full 3D worlds -- both virtual and real -- endowing them with spatial intelligence as rich as our own," the company said in a Friday post on LinkedIn. World Labs was founded by artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer Fei-Fei Li and computer vision and graphics technologists Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner and Ben Mildenhall, according to the post. In a Friday blog post announcing the company's formation and funding round, World Labs said that spatially intelligent LWMs will allow artists, designers, developers and engineers to imagine and create their own virtual spaces with physics, semantic and control. "Over time, we expect to train increasingly powerful models with broader capabilities that can be applied in a variety of domains, working alongside people," the post said. World Labs' funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, NEA and Radical Ventures, according to the post. In their own blog post about the investment in World Labs, Andreessen Horowitz general partners Martin Casado and Sarah Wang wrote that the startup aims to build "a true 3D representation of world you can walk through, interact with and build upon." This representation of the real world, or a generated virtual world, would allow reasoning about physics and cause-and-effect, they wrote. "They're building a foundation model that can generate 3D interactive worlds, which are the basis for spatial reasoning," Casado and Wang wrote of World Labs. "There are immediate applications for such a model, ranging from design to gaming and from visual effects to AR and VR. And, in the longer term, robotics, as the hardware catches up to the software!" It was reported in July that World Labs reached unicorn status in just four months and that the technology it is building could revolutionize industries from healthcare to manufacturing. Li is often referred to as the "godmother of AI" and developed ImageNet, a large-scale visual database that has been pivotal in advancing computer vision.