AMD to Acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs
The $8.2 billion all-stock deal will bring World Labs' spatial-intelligence research into AMD as the chipmaker expands its focus on physical AI.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has agreed to acquire World Labs, the artificial intelligence startup co-founded by prominent AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion. The deal gives AMD access to World Labs' research into AI systems designed to understand and simulate the physical world.
World Labs develops spatial-intelligence models that can generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive three-dimensional environments using text, images and video. The company's technology is also being developed for robotic learning and simulation, areas that are becoming increasingly important as AI moves beyond conventional digital applications.
DEAL SNAPSHOT
AMD's all-stock acquisition of World Labs is valued at approximately $8.2 billion and is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions.
As part of the transaction, Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su. The World Labs team will continue to focus on AI model research following completion of the acquisition.
AMD said the acquisition is intended to strengthen its understanding of emerging AI workloads and help shape future hardware, software and systems. As AI development expands into reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, the company said closer integration between model research and computing infrastructure could inform its technology roadmaps.
KEY NUMBERS
World Labs raised $1 billion in a funding round earlier in 2026, including investment from AMD, before agreeing to the $8.2 billion acquisition.
AMD and World Labs had already established a technical partnership focused on model training and inference optimisation on AMD GPUs. The acquisition deepens that relationship by bringing the startup's researchers and model expertise into the chipmaker.
Li is known for her work in computer vision and for co-founding World Labs in 2024 to develop AI models with a stronger understanding of three-dimensional environments. The acquisition is expected to give AMD a greater role in the development of technologies aimed at robotics, simulation and other applications where AI must interact with the physical world.