Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has secured a $200 million investment from software design giant Autodesk. Through this partnership, the two companies will work together to study how World Labs’ models – AI systems that can generate and infer immersive 3D environments – can work with Autodesk’s tools and vice versa, with a focus on entertainment use cases.
The deal is part of a larger round for World Labs, according to Autodesk, but Autodesk declined to disclose further details. WorldLabs, which emerged from stealth at $230 million in 2024 at a $1 billion valuation, is now reportedly in talks to raise capital at a $5 billion valuation.
World Labs did not immediately respond to a request for further details.
For World Labs, Autodesk’s investment signals the commercial appeal of its product. Marble, the startup’s first global model product released last November, allows users to create editable and downloadable 3D environments.
Autodesk is one of the largest developers of 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software. Its platform powers workflows in architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and entertainment. Our focus on the built world makes investing in advanced spatial AI a natural extension of our core business.
Or, as Lee said 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 enhances 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 companies will collaborate on a “research and modeling level.”
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Daron Green, Autodesk’s chief scientist, told TechCrunch that the partnership is still in its early stages and the exact form has not yet been determined.
“You would expect that either we would consume their model or they would consume our model in a variety of settings,” Green said.
He thought Autodesk’s technology could be used by customers who might want to start with world model-based sketches in World Labs (such as office layouts) and then dig into specific design aspects (such as desk design).
“Similarly, you might want to put objects that you design in our (platform) into a context that you create through one of the (World Labs) prompts,” Green said.
Green added that data sharing is not part of the agreement.
Green said the companies plan to start with media and entertainment use cases. Most companies building world models, such as Google DeepMind and Runway, consider gaming and interactive entertainment as an early go-to-market strategy.
Autodesk already works with most major media production companies to train models for character animation.
“These are close to world models,” Green said. “These are representations of features of animals in the world that react to physical constraints such as time and perhaps the terrain they need to traverse. So the model has a physical understanding, and you can see how that comes together (with World Labs technology). You’re not just giving the dog an animation, you’re giving the dog a world that the dog can interact with.”
The partnership with World Labs supports Autodesk’s broader efforts to integrate more AI capabilities across its software portfolio. The company is developing “neural CAD.” This is a new type of generative AI model trained on geometric data that can reason about components and entire systems. Simply put, you can generate working 3D models, not just images, with an understanding of how those designs will perform in the real world.
Autodesk’s neural CAD models are already being integrated into the company’s product design and architecture products as a step towards more advanced spatial intelligence. But World Labs’ model could help extend its capabilities beyond individual design files to a more holistic digital representation of the physical world.
In the future, Green believes Autodesk will combine various AI systems, such as large language models, world models, and neural CAD, to improve designs for Autodesk customers.
“For AI to be truly useful, it needs to understand the world, not just words,” Lee said in a statement. “The world is ruled by geometry, physics, and mechanics, and reconciling semantics, spatial theory, and physics is the next big frontier for AI.”
