Laurene Powell Jobs family office invests in World Labs

Emerson Collective, the investment and philanthropy platform of Laurene Powell Jobs, has participated in a $1 billion funding round for World Labs, announced on February 18, 2026. The round — one of the largest AI financings of 2026 — included Autodesk (which committed $200 million and will serve as an advisory partner), chipmakers AMD and Nvidia, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Southeast Asian technology conglomerate Sea, and returning investor Andreessen Horowitz, among others. Bloomberg reported in January 2026 that World Labs was in discussions at a valuation of approximately $5 billion. World Labs, founded by pioneering AI researcher Fei-Fei Li — widely known as the “godmother of AI” for her foundational work on ImageNet — is focused on advancing spatial intelligence: AI systems that can perceive, generate, and reason about three-dimensional environments, rather than relying on two-dimensional data such as flat images or text. The company’s first product, Marble, enables users to create spatially cohesive, high-fidelity, persistent 3D worlds from images, video, or text prompts. World Labs emerged from stealth in September 2024 with $230 million in initial funding at a $1 billion valuation and has now raised a total of approximately $1.23 billion. The company is targeting applications across entertainment, visual effects, virtual reality, gaming, robotics, and scientific discovery, with Autodesk’s strategic involvement signaling potential integration with its dominant suite of 3D design tools including AutoCAD, Maya, and 3ds Max. The investment from both Nvidia and AMD — the two chipmakers powering virtually all AI training infrastructure — underscores an expectation that spatial intelligence and world models will be among the most GPU-intensive AI workloads in the years ahead.

About Emerson Collective: The Powell Jobs family office

Emerson Collective is the investment, philanthropy, and advocacy organization founded in 2004 by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Powell Jobs, born in 1963 in West Milford, New Jersey, holds a BA in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she met Steve Jobs when he delivered a campus lecture in 1989. The couple married in 1991; Jobs passed away in October 2011, leaving Powell Jobs as the principal heir to his fortune. Her estimated net worth exceeds $15 billion, derived primarily from holdings in Apple (where she is one of the largest individual shareholders) and The Walt Disney Company (inherited through Jobs’s early investment in Pixar, which was acquired by Disney in 2006). Named after the American essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson Collective operates as a limited liability company rather than a foundation, giving it flexibility to deploy capital across for-profit investments, venture capital, nonprofit grants, advocacy campaigns, and media. The organization is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and employs more than 200 people. Emerson Collective’s investment portfolio has increasingly focused on artificial intelligence, reflecting Powell Jobs’s conviction that the technology can address fundamental societal challenges. Recent AI-related investments include backing Humans& (a self-described “human-centric” AI startup, alongside Bezos Expeditions and Nvidia) and Chai Discovery (an AI-for-drug-discovery company backed by General Catalyst and Menlo Ventures). CNBC’s 2026 Family Office 15 ranked Emerson Collective among the most active direct-investing family offices in the United States. Beyond technology, Emerson Collective has made significant investments in media (acquiring a majority stake in The Atlantic in 2017), education reform (through the XQ Institute and College Track, which Powell Jobs co-founded in 1997), immigration policy (through TheDream.US, the largest national scholarship program for DREAMers), food systems, and environmental sustainability. Powell Jobs is also a co-founder of the Emerson Collective Foundation, a board member of Stanford University, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Article Source: IFC Review, 06.03.2026