BY Richard Summerfield
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) startup World Labs in an all-stock deal valued at $8.2bn.
The transaction is expected to bring model experts and researchers together to strengthen AMD’s ability to produce AI hardware and software systems. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
World Labs co-founder and chief executive officer Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to Lisa Su, chair and chief executive of AMD. Dr Li is a pioneer and researcher in the AI space.
World Labs’ expertise in making advanced models will give AMD “deeper insight into how workloads are evolving”, said AMD in a statement announcing the deal. The company’s move for World Labs comes as many large semiconductor designers are moving to support AI in physical AI, robotics and simulation.
“Building the compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving,” said Dr Su. “Fei-Fei and the World Labs team bring exceptional research leadership and model expertise. 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.”
“Advancing the next generation of AI technology requires close collaboration across model research, systems and compute,” said Dr Li. “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.”
San Francisco-based World Labs develops spatial intelligence models used to generate and simulate 3D worlds from text, image and video inputs and tech for robotics learning and simulation. The company has around 70 staff and reportedly reached a $5bn valuation after a February funding round. AMD has been a funder of World Labs in the past.
The acquisition is AMD’s second largest on record, following the roughly $50bn it paid for Xilinx in 2022. The company is attempting to make inroads into the AI M&A market as other US tech giants also continue to pursue top engineering and research talent. In recent years, Nvidia has spent around $33bn on AI chipmaker Groq and open-source platform Hugging Face. Likewise, Meta spent around $14bn in 2025 to acquire a minority stake in Scale AI in a deal that brought in the startup’s founder, Alexandr Wang, to create up a new AI division.
News: AMD to buy Fei-Fei Li's World Labs in $8.2 billion bet on ‘physical AI’