According to Cointelegraph, artificial intelligence startup World Labs officially launched on September 13. The company is valued at over $1 billion and has raised over $230 million to build a “spatial intelligence” system.

World Labs was co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, the former head of Google Cloud AI. Li is known as the “Mother of AI” for her contributions to the foundational research of modern generative AI. She is also the co-director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University.

World Labs’ main product is “Large World Models” (LWMs). The company noted in a blog post that current generative AI models can only interact with the world through text, audio, and video.

World Labs aims to develop spatially intelligent AI capable of modeling and reasoning in 3D space and time to bridge the gap between existing AI models and artificial agents that can perceive the 3D world.

The company hopes this will unlock new capabilities for creative users and professionals such as artists, designers, developers and engineers, and allow anyone to imagine and create their own worlds, extending the potential of generative AI from 2D images and videos to 3D worlds.

The emergence of this type of AI model could have significant implications in areas such as robotics and virtual worlds, eventually leading to the development of AI models capable of generating full 3D virtual worlds.