World Labs lands $1B, with $200M from Autodesk, to bring world models into 3D workflows

Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has brought in a $200 million investment from software design leader Autodesk as part of a broader $1 billion funding round that also includes backers such as AMD, Emerson Collective, Fidelity, Nvidia, and others.

World Labs, which came out of stealth in 2024 with $230 million raised at a $1 billion valuation, would not confirm whether this latest round increased its valuation. Still, reporting from about a month ago indicated the company was seeking to raise at a $5 billion valuation.

The new partnership between World Labs and Autodesk will have the two organisations working together to explore how World Labs’ models — AI systems designed to generate and reason about immersive 3D environments — can integrate with Autodesk’s tools, and how Autodesk’s technology could complement World Labs’ approach. The collaboration is expected to begin with a focus on entertainment and media use cases.

For World Labs, Autodesk’s participation is an important signal that the startup’s product has real commercial potential. The company’s first world-model product, Marble, launched last November and enables users to create editable, downloadable 3D environments.

Autodesk, meanwhile, remains one of the world’s most prominent developers of 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software. Its platform is deeply embedded in architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and entertainment workflows, and that emphasis on the built world makes investing in advanced spatial AI a logical extension of its core business.

Or as Li 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 augments human creativity and puts more powerful tools in the hands of designers, builders, and creators.”

Under the terms of the deal, Autodesk will serve as an adviser to World Labs, and the two companies will collaborate at the “research and model level.”

Daron Green, Autodesk’s chief scientist, noted that the partnership is still in the early stages, meaning the exact shape of the collaboration has not yet been finalised.

“You could anticipate us consuming their models or them consuming our models in different settings,” Green said.

He suggested that customers might begin with a world-model-based sketch created in World Labs — for example, a rough office layout — and then zoom in on specific design elements, such as the structure and details of a desk, where Autodesk’s tools could be part of the workflow.

“Similarly, you might want to take an object that you’ve designed in our [platform], and put it in a context that you create through one of [World Labs’] prompts,” Green said.

Green added that the agreement does not include data sharing.

According to Green, the companies plan to start with media and entertainment applications. Many organisations building world models — including Google DeepMind and Runway — are targeting gaming and interactive entertainment as early go-to-market opportunities.

Autodesk already works with most major media production companies and has been training models focused on character animation.

“These are close to world models,” Green said. “They’re a characterisation of an animal in the world that’s responding to physical constraints like time, maybe a terrain it needs to traverse. So there’s a physical understanding in the model, and you can see how that might be combined [with World Labs’ tech]. You’re not just animating the dog, but you’re giving it a world within which it can now interact.”

The collaboration with World Labs also aligns with Autodesk’s broader effort to integrate more AI across its software suite. The company is building “neural CAD,” a new kind of generative AI model trained on geometric data that can reason about individual components and entire systems. In simpler terms, it aims to generate functional 3D models — not just images — while accounting for how designs would behave and operate in real-world conditions.

Autodesk’s neural CAD models are already being integrated into the firm’s product design and architecture offerings as part of a longer-term move toward more advanced spatial intelligence. But World Labs’ models could expand that capability beyond individual design files, helping create richer, more complete digital representations of physical environments.

Green believes different types of AI systems — including large language models, world models, and neural CAD — will ultimately be combined to improve design outcomes for Autodesk’s customers.

“If AI is to be truly useful, it must understand worlds, not just words,” Li said in the statement. “Worlds are governed by geometry, physics, and dynamics, and reconciling the semantic, spatial, and physical is the next great frontier of AI.”