SAN FRANCISCO, California: World Labs, the artificial intelligence startup founded by prominent computer scientist Fei-Fei Li, has raised US$1 billion in a new funding round as it advances work on what it calls "spatial intelligence."

The company said on February 18 that investors in the round included chipmakers AMD and Nvidia, design software firm Autodesk, Emerson Collective, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Sea, among others.

Autodesk invested $200 million and will serve as an adviser to the startup, the company said.

World Labs did not disclose its valuation and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Bloomberg News reported in January that the startup was in talks to raise funds at a valuation of about $5 billion.

Spatial intelligence refers to AI systems that reason about how the three-dimensional world works, rather than relying solely on two-dimensional inputs such as text or flat images. World Labs' foundational models are designed to perceive, generate, and interact with 3D environments.

Li, widely known as the "godmother of AI," previously raised $230 million in September 2024 to launch the company. She has said spatial intelligence models could eventually be applied in areas such as augmented and virtual reality and robotics.

World Labs joins other companies, including Google DeepMind, in developing so-called "world models" — AI systems that process visual data from their physical surroundings to support advanced reasoning.

Google DeepMind's Genie family of models can generate and simulate 3D environments. World Labs has said its Marble multimodal world model can create 3D worlds from image or text prompts.

Yann LeCun, formerly Meta's chief AI scientist, left the company to launch his own startup, AMI Labs, which will focus on building AI systems using world models.

The funding underscores sustained investor interest in next-generation AI systems that extend beyond language-based models toward more immersive, real-world applications.