fei fei li, AI

Exclusive: NEA led a $100M round into Fei-Fei Li's new AI startup, now valued at over $1B

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fei fei li, AI

Image Credits: Getty Images

World Labs, a stealthy startup founded by renowned Stanford University AI professor Fei-Fei Li, has raised two rounds of financing two months apart, according to multiple reports. The latest financing was led by NEA and valued the company at over $1 billion, TechCrunch has learned from several people with knowledge of the investments. This was a $100 million round previously reported by the Financial Times in July.

This was a significant increase in valuation from World Labs’ initial financing, which took place in April, and valued World Labs at $200 million, one person said. Investors in the first round included Andreessen Horowitz and Canadian firm Radical Ventures, where Li is a scientific partner, Reuters reported in May. Li and NEA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

World Labs, which was reportedly founded in April and went from founding to unicorn in four months, suggests that investors continue to place large bets on AI startups founded by prominent AI scientists, even if the startups businesses are unproven. 

In the case of World Labs, what Li is working on is particularly difficult to do and could be essential in the AI-driven world that Silicon Valley is madly building. It’s aiming to create AI models that can accurately estimate the three-dimensional physicality of real-world objects and environments, enabling detailed digital replicas without the need for extensive data collection.

Li, widely known as a “Godmother of AI,” discussed how machines can be trained to develop human-like “spatial intelligence” in a TED talk earlier this year.

“Very little three-dimensional data exists in the world,” said one investor familiar with World Labs’ approach. “Autonomous vehicle companies collect that data by driving thousands and thousands of miles to create three-dimensional data, which they then use to train their machines. In all other applications, like serving coffee, there’s no three-dimensional data. Collecting that data is expensive because the universe of places you have to collect data is enormous.”

Once available, World Labs’ models can be used in gaming and robotics applications, she said.

Li is best known for her work on ImageNet, a dataset that revolutionized computer vision. She is currently on partial leave until December 2025 from her role as co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute.

Exclusive: NEA led a $100M round into Fei-Fei Li's new AI startup, now valued at over $1B

by with No Comment Tech

World Labs, a stealthy startup founded by renowned Stanford University AI professor Fei Fei Li, has raised two rounds of financing  two months apart, according to multiple reports. The latest financing was led by NEA and valued the company at over $1 billion, TechCrunch has learned from several people with knowledge of the investments. This was a $100 million round previously reported by the Financial Times in July.

This was a significant increase in valuation from World Labs’ initial financing, which took place in April,  and valued World Labs at $200 million, one person said. Investors in the first round included Andreessen Horowitz and Canadian firm Radical Ventures, where Li is a scientific partner, Reuters reported in May. Fei Fei Li and NEA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

World Labs, which was reportedly founded in April and went from founding to unicorn in four months, suggests that investors continue to place large 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 so difficult to do, and could be essential in the AI-driven world that Silicon Valley is madly building. World Labs is working on building AI models that can accurately estimate the three-dimensional physicality of real-world objects and environments, enabling detailed digital replicas without the need for extensive data collection.

Li, widely known as a “Godmother of AI,” discussed how machines can be trained to develop human-like “spatial intelligence”  in a TED talk earlier this year.

“Very little three dimensional-data exists in the world,” said one investor familiar with World Labs’ approach. “Autonomous vehicle companies collect that data by driving thousands and thousands of miles to create three-dimensional data, which they then use to train their machines. In all other applications, like serving coffee, there’s no three-dimensional data. Collecting that data is expensive because the universe of places you have to collect data is enormous.”

Once available, World Labs’ models can be used in gaming and robotics applications, he said.
Li is best known for her work on ImageNet, a dataset that revolutionized computer vision. She is currently on partial leave until December 2025 from her role as co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute.

Jennifer Li of Andreessen Horowitz

Exclusive: A16z promotes Jennifer Li to help lead the new $1.25B Infrastructure fund

by with No Comment Tech

Jennifer Li of Andreessen Horowitz

Image Credits: Andreessen Horowitz

Powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is promoting Jennifer Li to general partner after six years at the firm. She’s being tapped to help invest the new $1.25 billion Infrastructure fund managed by longtime a16z general partner Martin Casado.

The Infrastructure fund is part of the fresh $7.2 billion that the Silicon Valley VC giant just raised. Li has been an investing partner on the Infrastructure team for a while, which means she was already writing checks and taking board seats. But her promotion puts her in rarified air: making her the 27th general partner at the firm, and she’s hit this career milestone while in her early 30s.

While that may sound like a lot of GPs, a16z currently has over 500 employees. Plus she’s one of only four GPs on the Infrastructure team. The others are Anjney Midha, who joined the firm last summer; Zane Lackey, who joined two years ago; and Casado.

“Promoting Jennifer to general partner means that much more autonomy in deal making and, as importantly, that much more influence on the team’s culture, investment philosophy, and operating model,” Casado told TechCrunch over email.

In Casado’s blog post announcing her promotion, he also mentioned that she and he were the two people largely responsible for building the infrastructure investing team. He described her as “a low-ego, incredibly reliable and generous partner to work with. No detail escapes her notice, and no challenge is too daunting for her to tackle. As Ben Horowitz has said many times, ‘She embodies the a16z culture.’”

In her time at a16z, Li helped the firm find data connectivity startup Fivetran, valued at $5.6 billion in 2021; and data analytics developer tool startup dbt, which hit a $4.2 billion valuation in 2022 (both of those deals were led by Casado). She led the firm’s investments in developer-focused video platform Mux, a unicorn as of 2021; database startup MotherDuck, valued at $400 million earlier this year; and AI voice startup ElevenLabs, a unicorn as of January, where she serves on the board.

Prior to joining a16z in 2018, she led product at AI startup Solvvy, acquired by Zoom in 2022; led self-service and analytics products at AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion; and was a Kleiner Perkins Product Fellow in 2016.