World Labs Secures $1 Billion to Advance Spatial Intelligence and Persistent 3D World Models

World Labs announced a massive $1 billion funding round on February 18, 2026, to fuel its mission in spatial intelligence. This capital injection, backed by industry giants like NVIDIA and AMD, values the company at approximately $5 billion. The investment marks a significant shift from 2D text generation toward the creation of immersive, persistent 3D environments.

The round includes strategic participation from Autodesk, Emerson Collective, and Fidelity Management & Research Company. Autodesk contributed $200 million, signaling a deep partnership aimed at integrating spatial AI into professional design and engineering workflows. This collaboration helps bridge the gap between generative concepts and precise architectural tools.

The funding arrives as World Labs moves its flagship product, Marble, into general availability. Marble is a multimodal world model that allows users to generate interactive 3D spaces from text, images, or video. Unlike previous video generators, these worlds are spatially consistent and can be explored as if they were real physical locations. Alongside the consumer facing Marble, the company is expanding its developer reach through the World API. This interface enables external creators to build 3D worlds directly into their own applications, ranging from gaming to robotics training. By providing these tools, World Labs aims to become the foundational layer for the next generation of 3D content. Founded by AI pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li, World Labs focuses on giving AI the ability to understand gravity, depth, and physical occlusion. The team includes researchers who pioneered neural rendering techniques like Neural Radiance Fields. Their ultimate goal is to create world models that serve industries as diverse as storytelling, robotics, and scientific discovery.