Fei-Fei Li’s AI Startup World Labs in Funding Talks at $5 Billion Valuation

Artificial intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li has had discussions with investors to raise hundreds of millions in funding for her startup, World Labs, at a valuation of about $5 billion, according to people familiar with the discussion.

The new valuation would be a leap forward for World Labs, which came out of stealth in 2024 with a $230 million financing valuing the company at $1 billion. Existing investors include Andreessen Horowitz, NEA and Radical Ventures, a firm where Li is listed as a scientific partner. Nvidia Corp.’s venture arm has also put money into the business.

The round is expected to add about $500 million to World Labs’ balance sheet, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. However, the deal has not yet been finalized and details could change, they said. Representatives for World Labs didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The startup is working on AI tools that can navigate and make decisions about the three-dimensional world, building what it calls “large world models.” Late last year, World Labs launched its first product, Marble, which it describes as a model that can create 3D worlds from image or text prompts. Many AI investors in search of the next big technological breakthrough are exploring moving beyond large language models, or LLMs, that power text-based chatbots like ChatGPT — leading to a surge in interest in less developed areas like world models.

Yann LeCun’s world models startup, AMI Labs, has attracted potential backers including Cathay Innovation in a round that could value the former Meta Platforms Inc. researcher’s company at $3.5 billion, Bloomberg reported this week.

Li, who has been called the “godmother” of AI, is known for her work leading the historic ImageNet project in 2006. The visual database of over 15 million images helped computers “see” the way humans do and opened the door for a wave of AI development. Outside of her startup work, Li is also a Stanford University professor and a founding co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI.

Other backers of the company include Saudi Arabia’s Sanabil Investments and Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings Pte. Individual investors World Labs’ 2024 funding round include including Jeff Dean, chief scientist of Google DeepMind, actor and investor Ashton Kutcher and Geoffrey Hinton, a former Google AI researcher known for his work to advance the field of machine learning. Hinton is also an investor in Radical Ventures.

“My key investors, I hand pick them,” Li previously said in an interview in December. Li did not respond to requests for comment on the fundraising talks on Thursday.