Fei-Fei Li says running an AI startup has brought out her “tiger mom” side.
In an interview with Bloomberg released on Wednesday, the Stanford professor, known for creating ImageNet and often called the “Godmother of AI,” said that her seniority at the startup has put her in a bit of a parental role.
Li cofounded World Labs in 2024. The startup is developing “world models” designed to help AI understand and interact with 3D environments. Earlier this year, the company announced $1 billion in new funding from investors including AMD, Autodesk, and Nvidia.
“I’m by far the most senior in the company,” Li said. “From my co-founders to my engineers, and researchers, and scientists, they’re so talented, but they’re also young.”
“I do feel like a mom,” she added. “And oftentimes I feel like a tiger mom. I do run this shop as, I would say, high standard.”
The term “tiger mom” generally describes a highly demanding and strict parent who pushes their children to work hard, be disciplined, and strive for high achievement. It was popularized by American author and Yale Law School professor Amy Chua in her 2011 memoir, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” which detailed her strict approach to raising her daughters, including demanding top grades and intensive music practice.
Li previously said she finds herself taking on the role of a mentor with younger people — and she’s shared some anecdotes about AI’s impact on students and early careers.
In a 2025 podcast, she said it was a privilege to receive job applications from young AI and engineering talent, but she found that they overfocused on the small details of their career decisions.
“Sometimes I do want to encourage young people to focus on what’s important because I find myself constantly in mentoring mode when I talk to job candidates,” she said. “Not necessarily recruiting, but just in mentoring mode.”
She said she encourages them instead to think about where their passion lies, whether they believe in a company’s mission and team, and what kind of impact they could make.
Still, Li said that being a founder or senior leader is not an invitation to think you know more than everybody else.
“As a CEO, as an entrepreneur, our founding premise is we are here to contribute to society and to empower people,” she said. “I don’t think having a God complex is constructive, and I wouldn’t want to do that myself.”
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