AMD agreed to acquire World Labs, the San Francisco-based AI model and research lab founded by Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion, the company said Monday. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
Following the close, Dr. Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to AMD chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, the company said. The World Labs team will continue to focus on AI model research after the transaction closes.
World Labs develops spatial-intelligence models that generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image and video inputs, as well as technology for robotic learning and simulation. AMD said the acquisition will bring model research expertise into its hardware and software roadmap planning as AI expands into reasoning, robotics and physical applications.
“Building the compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving,” Dr. Lisa Su said in a statement. “Fei-Fei and the World Labs team bring exceptional research leadership and model expertise.”
“Advancing the next generation of AI technology requires close collaboration across model research, systems and compute,” Dr. Fei-Fei Li said in a statement. “Joining AMD will give our team the resources and engineering depth to accelerate our research and help define the infrastructure needed for the next era of AI.”
At roughly $8.2 billion, the deal ranks as AMD’s second biggest acquisition ever, surpassed only by its approximately $50 billion purchase of Xilinx in 2022, according to CNBC. AMD had already taken an investment stake in World Labs and the two had established a joint inference optimization and training partnership before the acquisition, according to TechCrunch.
AMD has been building momentum in AI infrastructure heading into the deal. The company reported record second-quarter revenue of $11.5 billion, with its data center segment — driven by Instinct GPU and EPYC processor sales — more than doubling year over year to $6.7 billion. AMD has also launched its Helios rack-scale system and secured major deployment commitments from Anthropic and Microsoft as it competes with Nvidia in the market for AI data center chips.
Marble, World Labs’ debut product, targets both the entertainment industry and the robotics sector by enabling the creation of simulated training environments. The broader research community views world models as a key enabler for bringing generative AI into physical domains such as robotics, according to TechCrunch.
Written by: Cris Tolomia @Quartz
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