AMD to buy Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — AMD said it will acquire World Labs, the artificial-intelligence startup co-founded by Stanford computer scientist Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at $8.2 billion — one of the largest acquisitions in the company's history.

Li, often described as a pioneer of modern computer vision, will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval.

What World Labs builds

World Labs develops so-called world models: AI systems that can generate and maintain realistic, three-dimensional simulations of physical environments. Its flagship product, Marble, is used both for interactive entertainment and for creating virtual spaces where robots can be trained before they operate in the real world.

Why AMD wants it

AMD has been trying to narrow Nvidia's lead in AI hardware by building a fuller software and research ecosystem around its chips. Owning a frontier research lab gives it early insight into the workloads its future processors will need to handle, particularly in robotics, from self-driving cars to humanoid machines. The two companies already had an inference-optimization partnership, and Li appeared at AMD's CES keynote earlier this year.