AMD announced that it has agreed to pay $8.2 billion for World Labs, an AI model and research lab led by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li.
The acquisition will bring a world-class team of researchers and model experts to AMD, strengthening its ability to develop AI hardware, software and systems around the needs of emerging models and applications, AMD said.
The deal follows the pattern of other events among AMD’s rivals that show that the AI boom is still in full swing. Nvidia recently announced it would buy AI firm Hugging Face for $12.9 billion.
As AI expands into reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, the demands on compute infrastructure become more diverse, AMD said. World Labs’ expertise in developing advanced models will give AMD deeper insight into how workloads are evolving and help shape its future technology roadmaps. The acquisition advances AMD’s strategy to deliver 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,” said Lisa Su, chair and CEO AMD, in a statement. “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 Li, cofounder and CEO of World Labs, in a statement. “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 that generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image and video inputs, as well as technology for robotic learning and simulation. Following the close of the transaction, the World Labs team will continue to focus on advancing AI model research, and Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to Lisa Su.
The all-stock transaction is valued at approximately $8.2 billion and is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Li is a computer scientist and Stanford professor and one of the most influential figures in modern AI. She is the founding director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), previously led the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and served as vice president and chief scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. One of her biggest contributions to the field is the creation of ImageNet, a massive labeled image dataset and benchmark that transformed computer vision research. In turn, that helped spark the deep-learning revolution.