Fei-Fei Li

Meet “the godmother of AI”

Fei-Fei Li moved to the U.S. at 16.

Her family shared a one-bedroom apartment in New Jersey.

She worked weekends behind the counter and studied during the week.

Learning English, catching up in school, and figuring out how to stay afloat.

She earned a physics degree from Princeton.

Then a PhD in electrical engineering from Caltech.

In 2007, she created ImageNet.

A massive dataset of labeled images that gave machines the data they needed to actually understand the visual world.

It’s why your phone recognizes faces.

Why self-driving cars work.

Why generative AI exists.

In 2015, she co-founded AI4ALL, a nonprofit bringing more women and underrepresented voices into AI.

Two years later, she joined Google Cloud as Chief Scientist of AI/ML.

Then returned to Stanford to co-found the Human-Centered AI Institute, where she still teaches.

Her focus: ethics, inclusion, and real-world impact.

She recently co-founded World Labs.

A startup focused on spatial intelligence.

AI that understands and navigates the physical world.

The company raised $230M in its first year.

She’s published 400+ scientific papers.

Testified before Congress.

Advised the UN and the White House.

Her students have gone on to lead teams at OpenAI, Tesla, and Google.

She’s been elected to the National Academy of Engineering and Medicine and named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential in AI.