AMD to buy Fei-Fei Li's World Labs in an $8.2bn all-stock deal

[NeonSpectre]

AMD has announced it will acquire World Labs, the AI startup led by Dr Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal worth around $8.2 billion. World Labs is based in San Francisco and builds spatial intelligence models that can generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, images and video. It also works on technology for teaching and simulating robots. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval

As part of the deal, Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to CEO Lisa Su. The World Labs team will carry on with its model research inside AMD. Li is one of the most respected names in AI, best known for creating ImageNet, the dataset that helped kick off the deep learning boom. Bringing her in as chief scientist is a statement in itself

AMD says the reasoning is about understanding where AI workloads are heading. As AI moves into reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, the company wants to know what hardware those models will need. Lisa Su said building compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving. Li said joining AMD will give her team the resources and engineering depth to speed up their research

It is an interesting move for a chip company. Nvidia has spent years building a software and research ecosystem around its hardware, and that is a big part of why it dominates. Buying a top research lab gives AMD in house expertise on cutting edge models, which could help it design chips that suit them better. It also brings a well known name to AMD at a time when it needs to compete for talent

World models and spatial intelligence are a hot area, with robotics and simulation needing AI that understands 3D space. Is $8.2 billion a fair price for a relatively young company? And does this help AMD close the gap on Nvidia, or is it a distraction from the hardware battle?

AMD to Acquire World Labs to Advance the Future of AInewsroom.amd.com