Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs Prompts $1 Billion, Ricursive AI Chip Design Snares $335 Million, Google Joins AI Music Parade

Forbes Business

by Charlie Fink, Contributor

February 20, 2026

AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary

Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has secured a significant $1 billion funding round, marking a major milestone in the AI startup space. Meanwhile, Ricursive, another prominent AI-focused company, has raised $335 million to develop cutting-edge AI chips designed specifically for AI models. Additionally, Google has expanded its AI capabilities by integrating Lyria 3, a music generation model, into its Gemini platform. These developments underscore the growing importance of AI innovation across industries and highlight the increasing investment in technologies that aim to push the boundaries of what is possible with artificial intelligence. World Labs, led by renowned AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, focuses on advancing multimodal AI and generative models. The $1 billion funding round, which includes investments from top-tier firms, positions the company as a leader in the field, aiming to create tools that can understand and generate content across multiple modalities, such as text, images, and audio. This focus on multimodal capabilities aligns with broader trends in AI, where systems are becoming more integrated and capable of handling diverse inputs and outputs. Ricursive’s $335 million funding round is a testament to the demand for specialized hardware that can accelerate AI model performance. By designing chips tailored for AI computations,

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Originally published on Forbes Business on 2/20/2026