Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has secured a $200 million investment from software design giant Autodesk as part of a larger $1 billion round from backers including AMD, Emerson Collective, Fidelity, Nvidia, and others.
World Labs, which emerged from stealth in 2024 with $230 million at a $1 billion valuation, declined to say whether the latest round boosted its valuation. However, reports a month ago suggested it was aiming to raise at a $5 billion valuation.
The partnership between World Labs and Autodesk will see the two companies collaborating to explore how World Labs’ models — AI systems that can generate and reason about immersive 3D environments — can work alongside Autodesk’s tools, and vice versa, starting with a focus on entertainment use cases.
For World Labs, Autodesk’s investment is a signal that its product has commercial appeal. The startup’s first world model product, Marble, released last November, lets users create editable, downloadable 3D environments.
Autodesk is one of the biggest developers of 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software. Its platform underpins architectural, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and entertainment workflows. That focus on the built world makes investment in advanced spatial AI a natural extension of its core business.
Or as Li put it in a statement: “Autodesk has long helped people think spatially and solve real-world problems and, together, we share a clear purpose: building physical AI that augments human creativity and puts more powerful tools in the hands of designers, builders, and creators.”
As part of the deal, Autodesk will serve as an advisor to World Labs, and the two will collaborate at the “research and model level.”
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