Fei-Fei Li, often hailed as the "Godmother of AI," has built a remarkable career from a humble beginning. Now the founder of World Labs, a one-year-old AI startup valued at over $1 billion, Li’s journey began far from the world of cutting-edge technology. At 15, she immigrated from China to the United States and helped her parents run a dry-cleaning business in Parsippany, New Jersey. “We were not financially very well off at all. My parents were doing cashier jobs and I was doing Chinese restaurant jobs,” she told Bloomberg. “My family and I decided to run a little dry cleaner shop to make some money to survive.” Li jokes that she was the “CEO” of the business, running it for seven years—from age 18 until the middle of her graduate studies. She kept the shop afloat while attending Princeton University, staying close to home to help her family. Later, while pursuing her Ph.D. at Caltech in California, she continued managing the business remotely. “I was the one who spoke English. So I took all the customer phone calls, I dealt with the billing, the inspections, all the business,” she recalled. That experience instilled in her a deep sense of resilience—a trait she says has defined her career. “As a scientist, you have to be resilient because science is a non-linear journey. Nobody has all the solutions. You have to go through such a challenge to find an answer. And as an immigrant, you learn to be resilient,” she said. Today, Li is at the forefront of a new wave in AI with World Labs, where she’s focused on developing “world models.” These advanced AI systems aim to give machines spatial intelligence—the ability to understand, perceive, reason, and interact with the physical world. She sees this as a natural evolution from visual intelligence, which she helped pioneer through ImageNet, a landmark dataset that revolutionized computer vision. Many experts believe world models will be key to the next phase of AI advancement, moving beyond the limitations of large language models that rely primarily on text. Li’s vision aligns with that of other leading figures in the field, including Meta’s former Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, who recently announced plans to launch his own world model venture. For Li, the thread connecting her early life and current work is curiosity. “I was always a curious kid, and then my curiosity had an outlet, which was science—and that really grounded me,” she said. “I wasn't curious about nightclubs or other things. I was an avid lover of science.” Her journey from running a dry cleaner to leading a billion-dollar AI startup stands as a testament to the power of perseverance, intellect, and an unrelenting drive to understand the world.