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Dive Brief:
- San Francisco-based tech giant Autodesk has invested $200 million in World Labsan artificial intelligence startup focused on physical artificial intelligence and 3D model generation, according to a Feb. 18 blog post by Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost.
- The cash represents the largest initial investment in Autodesk’s history, said Andy Lopez, the company’s public relations and communications manager.
- Funding infusion leads to World Labs total increase to $1 billionaccording to a news release from the launch. The investment highlights a trend in which real-world AI tools have gained increasing support from the construction industry.
Diving knowledge:
San Francisco-based World Labs’ AI-based tool Marble allows users to create 3D environments and objects from images, videos or text.
In the blog post, Anagnost focused on the future of physical-world AI, or AI that can affect how humans design and build structures in the real world.
Alongside this emphasis, Anagnost highlighted increased funding going towards other, more common facets of AI, such as hyperscalers and large language models. Anagnost said Autodesk’s investment indicates otherwise.
“Our investment in World Labs represents a different path, focused on solving the toughest problems of designing, building and operating the physical world, guided by human needs and domain expertise rather than scale alone,” Anagnost wrote.
In fact, startups that have focused on AI for real-world tools have been successful. Irvine, Calif.-based FieldAI, a startup that focuses on physical artificial intelligence for robots, announced over the summer that it had grossed $405 million in two consecutive funding rounds.
Other World Labs investors include AMD, Emerson Collective, Fidelity Management & Research, NVIDIA and Sea, according to the World Labs press release.
NVIDIA in particular has been active in the construction space. Through its venture capital arm NVentures, the company participated in FieldAI’s funding rounds and the $270 million Series B from Bedrock Roboticswhich retrofits traditional heavy machinery with autonomous technology.
With Autodesk’s investment in World Labs, the company will also serve as a strategic advisor. In this role, Autodesk will focus on exchanging ideas and strengthening its long-term AI foundation, according to Anagnost’s blog post.
Autodesk sees robotics and physical AI becoming more embedded in construction workflows, Lalith Subramanian, global vice president of product and engineering, told Construction Dive via email.
“As AI becomes capable of 3D reasoning, it will drive smarter automation across the built environment, from design and prefabrication to monitoring progress during construction, inspection, reality capture and digital twins,” said Subramanian.
The investment follows staff reductions at the contech giant. On January 22, Autodesk announced that it would lay off approximately 7% of its workers worldwideor around 1,000 jobs. The impact was felt most on their customer-facing sales teams.
