AMD strikes $8.2 billion all-stock deal to acquire Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs

AMD has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion, a deal the chipmaker says will deepen its AI research bench and help guide its future compute strategy.

In its announcement, AMD said World Labs’ team and model expertise would strengthen the company’s ability to build AI hardware, software and systems for emerging applications, particularly as demand expands into reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI (AMD announcement). AMD also said World Labs’ work would give it more insight into how AI workloads are changing and help shape future technology roadmaps (AMD announcement).

World Labs described the move as a way to accelerate its work on spatial and physical intelligence. In a post announcing the deal, the company said joining AMD would help it scale its efforts and reach while getting closer to the hardware (World Labs post).

AMD said World Labs, which it described as an AI model and research lab led by Fei-Fei Li, develops spatial-intelligence models that can generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image and video inputs, along with technology for robotic learning and simulation (AMD announcement).

Under the terms AMD disclosed, the World Labs team will continue focusing on AI model research after the transaction closes, and Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to CEO Lisa Su (AMD announcement). The company said it expects the acquisition to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions (AMD announcement).