Fei-Fei Li is one of USA TODAY’s 2026 Women of the Year, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and beyond. Meet this year's honorees here.
On Feb. 18, Fei-Fei Li made headlines. The company she cofounded, World Labs, announced they’d raised $1 billion ‒ with a B ‒ in funding. Now they're poised to bring artificial intelligence into 3D. That’s the “spatial intelligence” that will make it possible for robots to do the dishes or sort your socks.
Even Li couldn’t imagine that would be possible 20 years ago, when she was fresh off her PhD and a young assistant professor working in AI. At the time, the field was the stuff of sci-fi dystopian movies like "The Matrix" or "I, Robot" to the public. In the research community, the technology showed promise but had largely stalled.
“I entered AI smack in the middle of AI winter,” she says.
But Li had a theory. Humans learn visually; we absorb vast amounts of information by looking at the world around us. AI, she believed, needed to learn the way humans learn. Not just with algorithms, but pictures.
