Cisco Invests in Spatial Intelligence Leader World Labs
- Cisco has invested in World Labs through its venture arm, marking the startup’s largest strategic funding to date.
- World Labs is building a Large World Model and recently launched Marble, a platform for generating editable virtual environments.
Cisco has announced a strategic investment in spatial intelligence startup, World Labs, for an undisclosed amount. The investment was made through Cisco Investments, the company’s venture capital arm, and, according to the company, marks World Labs' largest strategic funding to date.
World Labs launched in 2024 with over $230 million in funding from firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia’s NVentures, and NEA. Founded by AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, the company is developing a Large World Model (LWM) that let machines understand and operate in 3D environments. Recently, World Labs publicly debuted its platform, Marble, which allows users to generate and edit 3D worlds using multimodal inputs like text, images, or video.
"The next great platform evolution in AI will be built around spatial intelligence," said Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco, in an official news release. "By joining Fei-Fei and the world-class World Labs team on this journey, we are accelerating the development of a future where AI takes an active role in the physical environment with agents and devices capable of transforming industries, augmenting human capacity, and driving massive gains in productivity."
Cisco said the investment is part of its broader strategy across research, acquisitions, partnerships, and funding. Backing World Labs supports its goal to be a key infrastructure provider for emerging AI systems.
🌀 Tom’s Take:
Cisco's move signals a deeper commitment to owning the infrastructure layer for spatially aware AI systems, which represent the next era of AI.
Source: Cisco
