Using the Metaverse model to build a personal 3D world, AI godmother Fei-Fei Li raised 230 million to start a startup, with "backers" including NVIDIA

Author: Li Dan

Source: Hard AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer and AI scientist Fei-Fei Li is making headlines again, this time attracting media attention for a new AI startup called World Labs. This company, supported by A-list "gold owners" such as top Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and NVIDIA, made its debut with the official establishment on Friday, September 13th, Eastern Time. Currently, World Labs has 20 employees, with founders including Fei-Fei Li and several well-known experts in the fields of computer vision and computer graphics, Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall.

The four founders of World Labs, with Fei-Fei Li on the far right

According to the official website of World Labs, it is a spatial intelligence AI company dedicated to creating the "Large World Model" (LWM) for the perception, generation, and interaction of 3D worlds. The company's goal is to elevate AI models from 2D pixel planes to complete 3D worlds, encompassing both virtual and real worlds, providing these worlds with rich spatial intelligence similar to that of the human world.

World Labs will develop spatial intelligence LWM, a model that can understand and reason about the 3D world from images and other modalities. Over time, the company hopes to train increasingly powerful models that can be applied in various fields, working alongside humans.

The founding team of World Labs stated that the company will initially focus on generating 3D worlds, creating and editing virtual spaces with physical, semantic, and control attributes, aiming to unlock new capabilities for creative users and professionals such as artists, designers, developers, and engineers. These spaces will also allow any user to imagine and create their own world, expanding the potential of generative AI from 2D images and videos to 3D worlds.

The founding team of World Labs mentioned that in order to achieve their ambitious goals, the company was established. The team has made significant progress but acknowledges that there is still a long way to go. In addition to having a strong research background, World Labs has received support from numerous AI professionals and venture capitalists.

As of this Friday, the company has raised a total of $230 million in funding and listed a series of well-known "gold owners." Lead investors include: Martin Casado and Sarah Wang, general partners at Andreessen Horowitz, Scott Sandell, Chief Investment Officer of New Enterprise Associates, and Jordan Jacobs, Managing Partner of Radical Ventures, where Fei-Fei Li serves as a scientific partner The institutions participating in the financing include NVIDIA's venture capital department NVentures, AMD, and Adobe's respective venture capital arms Adobe Ventures and AMD Ventures, Databricks Ventures, and Shinrai Investments LLC.

Individual investors participating in the financing include well-known figures in the AI field and throughout Silicon Valley, such as Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist of DeepMind, an AI research organization under Google, Geoffrey Hinton, former Google AI researcher known for advancing machine learning, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, Ashton Kutcher, Co-Founder of Sound Ventures, Marc Benioff, Co-Founder of Salesforce, Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn, the late Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube, and Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe.

Media summaries indicate that World Labs plans to create a grand world model, which will use data such as images to generate a 3D "world" that users can interact with and control. The company initially plans to generate a virtual 3D space where users can control variables, and also plans to allow people to create their own 3D "worlds." World Labs believes that its software will be useful for a range of professionals including artists, designers, developers, and engineers.

Commentary suggests that World Labs' financing indicates ongoing investor interest in technologies that push the boundaries of the AI field, and also reflects the startup's attractiveness to industry leaders.

Although World Labs did not disclose the company's valuation, reports in July of this year indicated that Fei-Fei Li would establish a startup valued at $1 billion