The ‘Godmother of Artificial Intelligence’ Has a Modern Startup Already Worth $1 Billion

Fei-Fei Li, a renowned computer scientist known as the “godmother of AI,” founded a startup called World Labs that was valued at more than $1 billion in just four months. this Financial Times reported.

World Labs hopes that by processing visual data like a human, artificial intelligence will be able to reason in an advanced way, Reuters reported that in May. Research to make it human-like, much like ChatGPT is trying to do with generative AI, is still ongoing.

Li is best known for her contributions to computer vision, a branch of artificial intelligence dedicated to helping machines interpret and understand visual information. She also spearheaded the development of ImageNet, a enormous visual database used for research on visual object recognition. Li led AI at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018 and currently advises the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence.

“[World Labs] “it’s developing a model that understands the three-dimensional physical world; basically the dimensions of objects, where things are and what they’re doing,” said an anonymous venture capitalist with knowledge of Li’s work Financial Times.

The startup has had two rounds of funding, the most recent of about $100 million, and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz and AI fund Radical Ventures (which Li joined as a partner last year). Li founded World Labs while on partial leave from Stanford, where she co-directs the Human-Centered AI Institute.

In an April Ted Talk, Li further explained the research area her startup will be working on, which involves algorithms that can realistically extrapolate images and text into three-dimensional environments and act on those predictions, using a concept known as “spatial intelligence.” This could bolster work in a variety of fields, including robotics, augmented reality, virtual reality, and computer vision. If these capabilities continue to develop in the ambitious way Li plans, it has the potential to transform industries like healthcare and manufacturing.

The investment in World Labs is part of a trend of venture capitalists eager to partner with ambitious AI companies, spurred by the surprising success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which quickly grew to a valuation of more than $80 billion.