As part of a $1 billion round from supporters AMD, Emerson Collective, Fidelity, Nvidia, and others, Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has acquired a $200 million investment from software design behemoth Autodesk.
World Labs declined to comment on whether the most recent round increased its valuation. The company came out of stealth in 2024 with $230 million at a $1 billion valuation. But according to rumors from a month ago, it was hoping to raise $5 billion.
With an initial focus on entertainment use cases, World Labs and Autodesk will work together to investigate how World Labs’ models—AI systems that can create and reason about immersive 3D environments—can complement Autodesk’s tools and vice versa.
World Labs interprets Autodesk’s investment as evidence of the commercial viability of its product. Users may construct editable, downloadable 3D environments with Marble, the startup’s initial world model offering, which was released last November.
One of the largest manufacturers of 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software is Autodesk. Its platform supports workflows in engineering, architecture, building, manufacturing, and entertainment. Given its emphasis on the built environment, investing in cutting-edge spatial AI is a logical extension of its primary business.
Or, as Li stated in a statement: “Autodesk has long assisted people in thinking spatially and solving real-world problems, and we all have the same goal: creating physical AI that enhances human creativity and gives designers, builders, and creators access to more potent tools.”
Autodesk will advise World Labs as part of the agreement, and the two will work together at the “research and model level.”
The cooperation is still in its infancy, therefore the exact shape it will take has not yet been decided, according to Daron Green, chief scientist at Autodesk.
Green stated, “You could expect us to use their models or them to use our models in various contexts.”
He pondered that clients could prefer to begin with a World Labs world-model-based drawing (for example, of an office layout) and then focus on certain design elements (such as the desk design), which is where Autodesk’s technology could be useful.
“In a similar vein, you may want to use one of [World Labs’s] prompts to create a context for an object you have designed in our [platform],” Green added.
Green went on to say that the deal does not include data exchange.
According to Green, the two businesses intend to begin with use cases related to media and entertainment. The majority of businesses that create world models, such as Runway and Google DeepMind, view games and interactive entertainment as their first go-to market approach.
Autodesk has been training models for character animation and already collaborates with the majority of major media production businesses.
Green remarked, “These are very similar to world models.” They depict an animal in the real world reacting to physical limitations, such as time or perhaps a terrain it must cross. As a result, you can see how the model’s physical understanding may be integrated [with World Labs’ technology]. You’re providing the dog a world in which it can now interact, in addition to animating it.
Autodesk’s larger drive to include more AI technologies into its software range is supported by the collaboration with World Labs. The business is creating “neural CAD,” a novel form of generative AI model that can reason about parts and complete systems after being trained on geometric data. In other words, it can produce functional 3D models—not just pictures—by knowing how those ideas would perform in the real world.
As a first step toward more sophisticated spatial intelligence, Autodesk is already incorporating its neural CAD models into its architecture and product design solutions. However, the models from World Labs may contribute to expanding that capability beyond discrete design files in order to create more comprehensive digital depictions of the real world.
Green believes that in the future, various AI systems—such as neural CAD, world models, and huge language models—will be integrated to enhance designs for Autodesk’s clients.
Li stated in the remark that “AI must understand worlds, not just words, if it is to be truly useful.” “The next great frontier of AI is to reconcile the semantic, spatial, and physical aspects of worlds, which are governed by geometry, physics, and dynamics.”
The initial publication time of this story was 6 AM PST on February 18, 2026. More information about World Labs’ fundraising has been added.