Fei-Fei Li

Who they are

Fei-Fei Li is CEO and co-founder of World Labs — created ImageNet, co-founded AI4ALL to diversify the field, and wrote 'The Worlds I See,' a memoir on her journey from immigrant to AI's defining researcher.

Person

Fei-Fei Li co-founded World Labs in January 2024 — before that she spent nearly two decades building AI as a discipline at Stanford, where she held the Sequoia Professorship of Computer Science, directed the Stanford AI Lab from 2014 to 2018, and co-directed the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She started as a physics undergrad at Princeton (BA, 1999), then took her PhD at Caltech in electrical engineering and computer science (2005), and worked her way through assistant professorships at UIUC and Princeton before landing at Stanford in 2009. In 2017–2018 she stepped out to serve as Chief Scientist of AI/ML and VP at Google Cloud, then returned to Stanford. She co-founded two organizations beyond her academic work: AI4ALL (2017), a nonprofit to bring underrepresented students into the field, and World Labs (2024), the spatial intelligence company she now runs as CEO. She wrote 'The Worlds I See,' a memoir on her arc from managing her family's dry-cleaning business as an immigrant teenager to shaping modern AI. She posts actively on LinkedIn about spatial intelligence and world models, appeared on Bloomberg to push back on Silicon Valley's 'god complex,' and released a MasterClass titled 'AI's Future — And Yours' in 2026. The through-line: she has always worked at the boundary where fundamental research meets what AI should be for — not just what it can do.

Company

World Labs closed a $1 billion Series B on February 18, 2026, with Autodesk putting in $200 million as lead investor alongside Nvidia, Fidelity Investments, and others, bringing total capital raised to $1.23 billion and valuing the company at $5 billion. The round came with a concrete product milestone: Marble, World Labs' spatial AI platform that generates editable and explorable 3D environments from text, image, or video prompts, launched in limited beta in November 2025 and was formally commercialized alongside the funding announcement in February 2026. The Autodesk partnership is not just financial — the two companies are integrating World Labs' models into Autodesk's 3D design tools, starting with media and entertainment workflows. World Labs also acquired SceniX in early 2026, with SceniX co-founder Yunzhu Li joining the company. Post-funding, World Labs is actively recruiting for robotics-focused research engineers working on SLAM systems, signaling an expansion beyond creative tools into physical AI.

Market

World Labs competes in the fast-forming market for spatial intelligence and 3D world models — a space where investor attention has shifted sharply away from text-only large language models toward AI that can understand, generate, and reason about physical 3D environments. Named competitors include Matterport, Cognite, Hexagon, Sakana AI (which has a Google partnership), AMI Labs (Yann LeCun's open-source world model effort), and Jeff Bezos' Project Prometheus, which targets industrial physical AI. World Labs ranks 4th among 254 active competitors by Tracxn's count and carries the highest total funding among its peers — the strategic investor mix of Autodesk, Nvidia, and AMD signals that chipmakers and design-tool platforms are betting on spatial AI as an integration layer, not just a standalone product.

Network

World Labs was co-founded with three researchers: Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall — all with deep computer vision and neural rendering backgrounds. In early 2026, Yunzhu Li joined as a co-founder of SceniX, which was acquired into World Labs, expanding the founding technical team. On the investor side, Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures backed the company at launch, with Autodesk, Nvidia, and AMD coming in at the Series B.

Justin Johnson· Co-founder, World Labs
Christoph Lassner· Co-founder, World Labs
Ben Mildenhall· Co-founder, World Labs
Yunzhu Li· SceniX Co-Founder, joined World Labs 2026

How they likely show up

Long tenure at Stanford (Sequoia Professor, AI Lab Director, HAI Co-Director across roughly 15 years) → thinks in institutional time horizons; not easily distracted by short-term hype cycles.
Hybrid role pattern — researcher, nonprofit founder, corporate executive, author, MasterClass instructor simultaneously → high tolerance for context-switching and parallel commitments; unlikely to be running a single-track agenda.
Public writing and speaking signal rated 'thought-leader' with active LinkedIn presence on spatial intelligence and world models → comfortable being a public face of a technical idea, not just the company.
Bloomberg interview on Silicon Valley's 'god complex' → willing to be publicly critical of mainstream tech culture, even while fundraising inside it; expects interlocutors to engage with substance, not flattery.
Co-founded AI4ALL (nonprofit) and World Labs (commercial startup) alongside full academic career → high agency operator who builds institutions, not just products.
Joined World Labs pre-launch in January 2024, raising $230M within months and $1B by February 2026 → comfortable with fast-moving capital cycles while maintaining a research-first framing.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific idea from 'The Worlds I See' or her LinkedIn posts on world models — she'll know immediately whether you've engaged with her actual thinking or just her reputation.
→ Ask about the Autodesk integration and where she sees Marble going beyond media and entertainment — it's the live strategic question and she'll have a considered view.
→ Don't frame spatial intelligence as 'just like LLMs but for 3D' — she has a distinct thesis about why spatial reasoning is a fundamentally different problem, and she'll correct you if you conflate them.
→ Her Bloomberg appearance on Silicon Valley's 'god complex' signals she's skeptical of unchecked tech hubris — lead with curiosity and epistemic humility rather than bold claims.
→ The robotics hiring signal (SLAM engineers post-Series B) is a forward-looking strategic move worth asking about directly — it's not yet publicly explained and she's likely to have a sharp answer.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Marble's launch — World Labs shipped a 3D world generation platform from text, image, or video prompts in November 2025 and commercialized it in February 2026 alongside a $1B raise; that's an unusually tight research-to-product loop for a frontier AI lab.
Reference the SceniX acquisition — she announced Yunzhu Li and the SceniX team joining World Labs in early 2026, and then she and Yunzhu Li appeared together at an a16z event; it's a concrete recent move that shows the team is assembling deliberately.
Bring up the Bloomberg 'god complex' interview — she went on record critiquing Silicon Valley's unchecked AI ambition while actively fundraising at a $5 billion valuation; that tension is worth exploring.

Discovery questions

Marble launched into media and entertainment workflows first — where does spatial intelligence need to go next for it to become infrastructure rather than a creative tool?
You're hiring SLAM engineers after the Series B — how does the robotics roadmap sit alongside the Marble product, and are these converging or separate bets?
AI4ALL has been running since 2017 and World Labs is now one of the best-funded spatial AI companies — what does it look like in practice to hold both the diversity-in-AI mission and the commercial scaling pressure at the same time?

Avoid

Don't open with generic praise about her being the 'godmother of AI' — she's on record engaging critically with Silicon Valley culture and will engage more if you come with a specific question than a flattering label.

Make it yours