Semiconductor giant AMD has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs, the artificial intelligence research company led by renowned AI scientist Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately US$8.2 billion.
The acquisition will bring World Labs’ team of AI researchers and model specialists into AMD as the chipmaker seeks to strengthen the connection between cutting-edge AI research and the hardware, software, and computing systems needed to run increasingly sophisticated models.
World Labs specializes in spatial intelligence, developing AI models capable of generating, reconstructing, and simulating interactive three-dimensional environments from text, images, and video. Its work also includes technologies for robotic learning and simulation.
The deal comes as AI development increasingly expands beyond traditional generative models into reasoning, robotics, simulation, and physical AI, creating new and more diverse demands on computing infrastructure.
AMD said World Labs’ expertise will give the company deeper insight into how emerging AI workloads are evolving, helping shape future hardware and software roadmaps while supporting its broader strategy of developing AI infrastructure for an open ecosystem.
“Building the compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving. Fei-Fei and the World Labs team bring exceptional research leadership and model expertise,” AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said.
“Together, we can use that insight to develop the hardware, software and systems that will power the next generation of AI and strengthen the open AI ecosystem,” she added.
World Labs co-founder and CEO Dr. Fei-Fei Li said joining AMD would provide the research laboratory with additional resources and engineering capabilities to accelerate its work.
“Advancing the next generation of AI technology requires close collaboration across model research, systems and compute,” Li said. “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.”
World Labs, which is headquartered in San Francisco, will continue to focus primarily on AI model research after the transaction is completed.
Under the planned organizational structure, Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist and will report directly to Su.
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
The deal represents a significant expansion of AMD’s AI ambitions, pairing its semiconductor and computing expertise with a research organization focused on models designed to understand and simulate the three-dimensional world.