Stanford AI leader Fei-Fei Li building 'spatial intelligence' startup

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li is building an AI startup that uses ‘spatial intelligence’ to have a more 3D understanding of the world.

Prominent computer scientist Fei-Fei Li is building a startup that uses human-like processing of visual data to make artificial intelligence (AI) capable of advanced reasoning, six sources told Reuters, in what would be a leap forward for the technology.

Li, considered a pioneer in the AI field, raised money for the company in a recent seed funding round. Investors included Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, three of the sources said, and Radical Ventures, a Canadian firm she joined as a scientific partner last year, according to two others.

Spokespeople for Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures declined to comment. Li did not respond to requests for comment.

Li is widely known as the "godmother of AI," a title derived from the "godfathers" moniker often used to refer to a trio of researchers who won the computing world's top prize, the Turing Award, in 2018 for their breakthroughs in AI technology.

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In describing the startup, one source pointed to a talk Li gave at the TED conference in Vancouver last month, in which she said the cutting edge of research involved algorithms that could plausibly extrapolate what images and text would look like in three-dimensional environments and act upon those predictions, using a concept called "spatial intelligence."

To illustrate the idea, she showed a picture of a cat with its paw outstretched, pushing a glass toward the edge of a table. In a split second, she said, the human brain could assess "the geometry of this glass, its place in 3D space, its relationship with the table, the cat and everything else," then predict what would happen and take action to prevent it.