Fei-Fei Li's World Labs Raises $1B for 3d World Models

World Labs just banked $1 billion to build AI that understands the physical world. The company announced the round on February 18, naming AMD, Nvidia, Autodesk, Fidelity, Emerson Collective, and Sea among backers. "We're focused on advancing spatial intelligence by building world models," the team wrote. See the funding announcement on the World Labs blog.

Quick primer:

World models are AI systems that build internal 3D representations of real environments. In plain terms: they map depth, object relationships, and simple physics so virtual agents can plan and act in real space. World Labs' first product, Marble, became generally available on November 12, 2025. Marble turns text, images, video, or coarse 3D layouts into editable, explorable 3D worlds you can export as meshes or as "Gaussian splats" (a rendering format that paints surfaces with many small, soft blobs to approximate detail).

By "persistent" and "spatially consistent" the company means scenes keep the same layout across sessions - no random morphing. That makes it practical to revisit, edit, and reuse a scene. Read more about Marble on the World Labs blog.

What Autodesk's $200M means:

This is a strategic bet, not just a passive investment. Autodesk - a leader in design and CAD software - also takes a formal advisor role and will explore model-level integrations with World Labs technology. Expect early workflows to appear in media and entertainment, then spill over into architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) and manufacturing. See Autodesk's announcement on the Autodesk News site.

How it fits in a stack:

World Labs launched a public World API on January 21, 2026. Developers can programmatically generate worlds and plug them into simulators like Nvidia Isaac Sim and MuJoCo, or into professional content tools. Early partners include Preview (filmmaking) and Fenestra (architecture). Details are on the World Labs blog: World API announcement.

Company snapshot:

• Founded in 2024 by Fei-Fei Li with Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall.
• Emerged from stealth with $230M at roughly a $1B valuation.
• Headquarters in San Francisco.
• Active hiring across research, graphics, and product. Coverage in TechCrunch.

Why you should care:

• Real customers over hype. Marble is live (freemium plus paid tiers), with an API and export formats that drop into existing pipelines. This is usable today, not a lab demo. See Marble on the World Labs blog.

• Tooling tailwinds. If you build for robots, visual effects (VFX), or AEC, automatic world generation can cut scene creation from weeks to minutes and makes simulation coverage far cheaper.

• Infrastructure pressure. Expect more demand for GPUs, large 3D datasets, SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) and graphics talent, and simulation pipelines - plus closer ties to Nvidia and AMD ecosystems. See the World Labs funding post for context.

Competitive heat check:

AMI Labs, reportedly led with Yann LeCun as executive chair and Alex LeBrun as CEO, is chasing similar world-model territory and is said to be raising at multibillion valuations from Paris. Translation: talent wars are likely. Read more at TechCrunch on AMI Labs.

Open questions:

• The valuation for this round was undisclosed.
• Enterprise SLAs and large-scale pricing are not public.
• Named customer logos beyond early partners have not been announced.
• Will core models be open-sourced? For now, World Labs is publishing research posts and has open-sourced the Spark renderer that powers Gaussian-splat worlds. See the post on creating bigger, better worlds on the World Labs blog.

Overall, World Labs is betting that practical, persistent 3D worlds plugged into real pipelines will matter more than flashy demos. With strategic backers and a live product plus an API, this is one to watch if you work in robotics, VFX, architecture, or manufacturing.