AMD to buy World Labs in $8.2B all‑stock AI deal

Move brings Fei-Fei Li and spatial-intelligence research in-house as AMD races Nvidia in AI.

AMD has agreed to acquire AI research startup World Labs in an all‑stock deal valued at about $8.2 billion, aiming to better align its AI hardware and software stack with emerging model workloads. World Labs, founded in 2024 by Fei-Fei Li and quickly reaching a $1 billion valuation, focuses on “world models” and spatial-intelligence systems that can generate and simulate interactive 3D environments and support robotic learning. The acquisition gives AMD an in‑house team building deep learning models that understand physical reality, which AMD says will inform its future AI chip and systems roadmap and bolster its open AI infrastructure strategy. After the deal closes, expected by the end of 2026 subject to regulatory approvals, Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, with the World Labs team continuing its research under the AMD umbrella. The move positions AMD more directly against Nvidia, which has been building its own world-model ecosystem and recently agreed to acquire Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion.