AMD has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs, the artificial intelligence research company co-founded and led by AI pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion.
The acquisition is aimed at strengthening AMD’s AI capabilities by bringing World Labs’ model research expertise and team of researchers into the company. AMD said the deal will help it better understand the changing requirements of AI workloads and shape future hardware, software and systems around emerging models and applications.
As AI workloads expand beyond conventional generative AI into areas such as reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, compute requirements are becoming increasingly diverse. AMD expects World Labs’ research capabilities to provide deeper insights into these evolving workloads and support its roadmap for AI infrastructure.
Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, AMD, said understanding how AI models are evolving will be critical to developing compute platforms for the next generation of AI. She said World Labs’ research expertise will help AMD develop hardware, software, and systems while supporting what the company describes as an open AI ecosystem.
Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, World Labs, said the combination of model research, systems and compute capabilities will be important for advancing the next generation of AI technology. She added that joining AMD will provide World Labs with additional resources and engineering capabilities to accelerate its research.
World Labs brings spatial AI expertise
Based in San Francisco, World Labs develops models focused on spatial intelligence, including technologies capable of generating, reconstructing, and simulating interactive 3D environments from text, image, and video inputs.
The company also works on technologies for robotic learning and simulation, areas that are expected to contribute to emerging physical AI applications.
Following completion of the acquisition, the World Labs team will continue its AI model research activities. Dr. Fei-Fei Li is expected to join AMD as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist, reporting to Dr. Lisa Su.
Deal expected to close by end of 2026
The transaction is structured as an all-stock acquisition valued at approximately $8.2 billion. AMD expects the deal to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
The acquisition is part of AMD’s broader strategy to build AI infrastructure spanning compute, software, and systems as AI applications evolve toward increasingly complex and specialized workloads.
