World Labs, a secretive startup founded by renowned Stanford AI professor Vivi Li, has raised two rounds of funding within two months of each other, according to multiple reports. The latest round was led by NEA and values the company at more than $1 billion, TechCrunch learned from multiple people familiar with the investments. That was a $100 million round previously reported by Financial Times In July.
That’s a significant increase from World Labs’ initial funding in April, which valued the company at about $200 million, one of the people said. Investors in the first round included Andreessen Horowitz and Canadian firm Radical Ventures, where Li is a scientific partner. Reported in MayNeither Lee nor the IAEA responded to requests for comment.
World Labs, which was reportedly founded in April and went from foundation to unicorn in four months, suggests that investors continue to place big bets on AI startups founded by prominent AI scientists, even if the startups’ businesses are unproven.
But in this case, what she’s working on is incredibly difficult, and may be essential in the AI-driven world that Silicon Valley is madly building. World Labs is building AI models that can accurately estimate the 3D physical structure of real-world objects and environments, enabling detailed digital replicas without the need for extensive data collection.
Lee, widely known as the “godmother of artificial intelligence,” discussed how machines could be trained to develop human-like “spatial intelligence” in TED talk Earlier this year.
“There’s very little 3D data in the world,” said one investor familiar with World Labs’ approach. “The self-driving vehicle companies collect this data by driving thousands and thousands of miles to create 3D data, which they then use to train their machines. In all the other applications, like serving coffee, there’s no 3D data. It’s expensive to collect this data because the universe of places you have to collect data is huge.”
Once World Labs’ prototypes become available, they could be used in gaming and robotics applications, she said.
Lee is best known for her work on ImageNet, a dataset that revolutionized the field of computer vision. She is currently working on On partial leave Until December 2025, she is co-director of the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University.
