World Labs, an artificial intelligence startup founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $1 billion in a new funding round to advance a novel approach to AI development.

In this financing round, Autodesk Inc invested $200 million in World Labs. Other investors included Andreessen Horowitz, NVIDIA, and Advanced Micro Devices, according to a blog post published by World Labs on Wednesday.

World Labs is reportedly one of a growing number of AI development companies focusing on so-called "world models." These models are designed to enable AI to understand the three-dimensional world and navigate and make decisions within it. AMI Labs, another world model startup founded by Yann LeCun, has also attracted significant investor interest.

Late last year, World Labs launched its first product, Marble. The company describes Marble as a model capable of generating three-dimensional worlds based on image or text prompts. With the new capital, World Labs is focusing on enhancing application capabilities in areas such as robotics and scientific discovery.

Fei-Fei Li's early research laid the groundwork for many current AI innovations. She was involved in the development of the academic project ImageNet, a database containing millions of images that drove major advancements in how computers recognize objects within images.

World Labs did not disclose its valuation following this funding round. Previous reports indicated the company had been in fundraising discussions at a valuation of approximately $5 billion.