The next frontier of AI is spatial intelligence — creating AI that can generate, understand, reason with, and interact with physical or virtual spaces.
Fei-Fei Li defines spatial intelligence as AI's next frontier and explains that World Labs' mission is to build large world models toward that goal. ✦ AI generated
Fei-Fei Li · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-28 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 1:14
“So, Faye, for the listeners that may not have the background, maybe you can give an overview of what World Labs does.”
World Lab has is a two-year-old startup. I I I think we should just recognize it's a frontier model lab. It's uh we we are building the next frontier of AI which is what we call spatial intelligence. And uh spatial intelligence is about um creating AI that has the ability to generate uh understand reason with and interact with spaces whether it's physical or virtual. And of course uh a means to an end towards spatial intelligence is building large world models. And that's what uh World Labs is mostly focused on.
verbatim transcript · starts at 1:14
1:14you can give an overview of what World Labs does. >> Yeah. Well, World Lab has is a two-year-old startup. I I I think we should just recognize it's a frontier model lab. It's uh we we are building the next frontier of AI which is what we call spatial intelligence. And uh spatial intelligence is about um creating AI that has the ability to generate uh understand reason with and interact with spaces
1:50whether it's physical or virtual. And of course uh a means to an end towards spatial intelligence is building large world models. And that's what uh World Labs is mostly focused on. >> Yeah. So you've been saying this since the very beginning which is um you know the machine's ability to perceive and reason about spaces and act on spaces but I always had the assumption that the acting on spaces was some like longist
2:17future thing but now you're acquiring a robotics company and so maybe talk a little bit about the timeliness of this and the intentions. >> Yeah. So first of all, it doesn't just take robotics to act within spaces or to interact, right? I mean, look at the creative field, whether it's VFX or gaming and or design. Many use cases, you can create and act within virtual spaces. World Warlab's thesis has always
- ·Spatial intelligence is the next frontier of AI
- ·AI that generates, understands, reasons with, and interacts with spaces
- ·Applies to both physical and virtual spaces
- ·World Labs is a two-year-old frontier model lab
- ·Large world models are the means to spatial intelligence
- ·World Labs focuses on building large world models