Global Labs gets $1B, and $200M from Autodesk, to bring global models into 3D modeling

Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has received a $200 million investment from software developer Autodesk as part of a joint venture. $1 billion in revenue from sponsors including AMD, Emerson Collective, Fidelity, Nvidia, and others.

World Labs, which originated in 2024 it is $230 million at a cost of $1 billion, he declined to say whether the latest round will increase its value. However, reports last month he said he wanted to raise the price of $ 5 billion.

The collaboration between World Labs and Autodesk will see the two companies join forces to explore how World Labs models – AI that can create and imagine deep 3D environments – can work together with Autodesk tools, and vice versa, starting with a focus on entertainment use cases.

For World Labs, Autodesk’s investment is a sign that its products are interested in commercialization. The world’s first brand, Marblereleased last November, allows users to create customizable, downloadable 3D models.

Autodesk is one of the largest developers of 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software. Its platform supports design, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and entertainment. Their focus on the built world makes investing in advanced AI a bigger part of its core business.

Or as Li put it: “Autodesk has long helped people think around and solve real-world problems and, together, we share a clear goal: to build physical AI that augments human capabilities and puts powerful tools in the hands of designers, developers, and manufacturers.”

As part of the agreement, Autodesk will be a consultant to World Labs, and the two will collaborate on “research and modeling.”

Daron Green, Autodesk’s chief scientist, told TechCrunch that the partnership is still in its early days, so its exact shape is not yet known.

“You can expect us to eat their species or adopt our species in different places,” Green said.

He thought that customers would like to start with global designs in World Labs (say, for office design) and then improve other aspects of the design (such as desk design), where Autodesk’s tech could come in.

“Similarly, you might want to take something that you’ve created in (our tower), and put it into a voice that you create through voice (World Labs),” Green said.

Green added that data sharing is not part of the agreement.

Green said the two companies plan to start with media and entertainment issues. Many companies that produce international brands – including Google DeepMind and The way to run – see games and social entertainment as a primary means of marketing.

Autodesk already works with major TV production companies and has been teaching video models.

“This is close to the international model,” Green said. “It is the appearance of an animal in the world that is responding to physical problems such as time, perhaps the space it has to go through. So there is a physical understanding in the model, and you can see how it can be connected (with World Labs technology).

The partnership with World Labs supports Autodesk’s larger push to integrate more AI into all of its software. The company is growing “Neural CAD” a new type of AI model trained on geometric data that can infer all parts and patterns. In short, it can create functional 3D models, not just images, and understand how those designs can work in the real world.

Autodesk’s neural CAD models are already being integrated into industrial design and architecture as a step towards advanced spatial intelligence. But World Labs models can help expand this potential beyond individual design files to a comprehensive digital representation of the world.

Green thinks that various AI systems, including large-scale language models, world models and neural CAD, will be integrated in the future to support Autodesk’s customer designs.

“If AI is to be useful, it needs to understand worlds, not just words,” Li said. “The world is governed by geometry, physics, and dynamics, and integrating the semantic, spatial, and physical is the greatest frontier of AI.”

This article was originally published on February 18, 2026 at 6 AM PST. Updated to include more information on the World Labs upgrade.