Company intelligence
As of September 28, 2026, World Labs was last valued at $5B (February 2026 Series B).
Builds AI 'world models' that generate interactive 3D environments from text, image or video (its Marble product); agreed in September 2026 to be acquired by AMD for $8.2B in an all-stock deal expected to close by year-end 2026, a 1.6x step-up from its $5B valuation just seven months earlier.
World Labs develops spatial-intelligence models that generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments, used in robotics and simulation.[1] Fei-Fei Li founded the company in 2024 to build deep learning models grounded in an understanding of the physical world.[2] Its first product, Marble, is pitched for building entertainment experiences and simulated environments for robot training.[2] On September 28, 2026 AMD agreed to acquire World Labs in an all-stock deal worth about $8.2 billion.[1],[3] The deal is expected to close before the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval.[2],[3] Bloomberg's wealth index credits Li with a 19% stake in the firm.[4]
World Labs is a spatial-intelligence AI company founded by Fei-Fei Li in 2024 that agreed in September 2026 to join AMD in an $8.2 billion deal.
World Labs is a spatial intelligence company building frontier models that perceive, generate, reason and interact with virtual and physical worlds, according to its own site. The company says its first product, Marble, generates spatially consistent, high-fidelity, persistent 3D worlds that users can move through, edit and inhabit.[1]
World Labs says Marble can create detailed 3D worlds from text, images, videos or 360-degree panoramas, and lets users precisely control the 3D layout of generated worlds and edit or combine them into larger environments. TechCrunch described Marble as pitched both as a tool for creating entertainment experiences and for creating simulated environments for robot training.[1],[2]
World Labs' about page says its ambition is to advance spatial and physical intelligence, enabling AI to model the world and reason about objects, places and interactions across space and time, which it describes as foundational for both creating worlds and operating within them.[3]
AMD agreed to acquire World Labs in an $8.2 billion deal, the two companies said, according to TechCrunch's report on the announcement.[2]
World Labs' about page lists a16z, ADIC, Adobe, AMD, Autodesk, Cisco, Databricks, Emerson, Fidelity, Intel, NEA, Nvidia, Radical, Sea, Salesforce, Samsung, Sanabil, Sound, Temasek and Zoom as investors under the heading 'Supported by world-class investors.' The page does not give dollar amounts for any of these investments.[3]
The sources opened for this profile do not independently confirm World Labs' seed or Series B round sizes or valuations, so no earlier funding figures are given here beyond the AMD deal price.[2],[3]
Fei-Fei Li founded World Labs in 2024 to develop deep learning models with a more robust understanding of the physical world, arguing that true general intelligence required a grounding in physics and the ability to reason about data beyond text, according to TechCrunch.[2]
World Labs' own about page says the company was founded by Li alongside Justin Johnson, Ben Mildenhall and Christoph Lassner, whom it describes as leaders in machine learning, generative AI, computer vision and graphics.[3]
World Labs and AMD began a deep technical partnership last year, starting with model training and inference optimization on AMD GPUs, according to World Labs' own announcement of the acquisition. The company says that as the two teams worked together, they decided it was a natural fit to combine their AI ecosystem of software, hardware, foundation models and applications.[4]
Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford computer science professor, is considered a pioneer in AI, particularly in computer vision, for her work building the ImageNet database and the AI competitions it inspired, according to TechCrunch.[2]
World Labs' own announcement says Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, working directly with CEO Lisa Su, while co-founders Justin Johnson and Ben Mildenhall will continue leading the World Labs team as it joins AMD.[4]
World Labs quotes Li saying that scaling the company's efforts, widening its reach and getting closer to the hardware are what is required to accelerate the future, after what she called tangible proof of the possibilities of the technology.[2]
AMD said that understanding frontier workloads, like those created at World Labs, will shape its chip-making roadmap, according to TechCrunch's report on the deal.[2]
World Labs justified the deal in a statement saying AI development required close collaboration across model research, systems and compute, TechCrunch reported.[2]
The acquisition is expected to close before the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval, according to both TechCrunch's report and World Labs' own announcement.[2],[4]
TechCrunch reported that the acquisition is likely to help AMD compete with rival Nvidia in building an ecosystem for AI-specific chips, noting that Nvidia already offers a suite of open-weight world models called Cosmos while AMD had previously only offered text- and video-based models to the public.[2]
Is something wrong on this page?
World Labs is an AI company, based in San Carlos, USA, founded 2024 by Fei-Fei Li.
| Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Lead investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2026 | Series Bnot counted: no linked source | $1B | $5Bpost-money | — | Value Add Pulse research |
| Sep 2024 | Seednot counted: no linked source | $230M | $1Bpost-money | — | Value Add Pulse research |
Equity only. “Equity raised” above sums the rounds with a dated, linked source; rumored rounds, tender offers and secondary sales are listed but not counted, and debt financing is listed separately.
| Date | Event | Amount | Valuation | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 28, 2026 | acquisitionRumored | $8.2B, all-stock | $8.2B | TechCrunch |
Li raised $230 million in September 2024 to launch World Labs.[3] In February 2026 the company raised $1 billion in a round that valued San Francisco-based World Labs at more than $5 billion, according to Bloomberg.[4],[3] AMD invested in that February round, and Nvidia was also an investor in World Labs earlier in 2026.[1],[3]
Oura's stalled IPO and AMD's announced $8.2 billion acquisition of World Labs (still pending regulatory approval) show 2026 rewarding M&A exits over public listings for venture-backed AI companies.
AMD is paying $8.2 billion in stock for Fei-Fei Li's spatial-intelligence startup World Labs, a direct answer to Nvidia's own world-model push and its pending Hugging Face acquisition.
AMD is acquiring Fei-Fei Li's spatial-intelligence startup World Labs for $8.2 billion, the chipmaker's largest AI acquisition yet as it races to build a software layer around its silicon.
A TechCrunch panel with Yann LeCun's AMI Labs and Fei-Fei Li's World Labs found both leading world-model companies evasive about commercialization plans, despite AMI raising over $1 billion and World Labs seeking a $5 billion valuation.
In February 2026 the company raised $1 billion in a round that valued San Francisco-based World Labs at more than $5 billion, according to Bloomberg.[4],[3]
Li raised $230 million in September 2024 to launch World Labs.[3]
Her co-founders Justin Johnson and Ben Mildenhall help lead World Labs.[1]
World Labs develops spatial-intelligence models that generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments, used in robotics and simulation.[1]
World Labs is headquartered in San Carlos, USA, according to Wikidata.
Figures are labelled Reported (a source states it), Estimated, Derived (computed from other facts) or Rumored (in talks / unconfirmed). Rumors never replace a confirmed figure. Each figure keeps its own as-of date; history is preserved rather than overwritten.