AMD agrees $8.2bn all-stock deal to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs
AMD has agreed to buy AI research lab World Labs in an all-stock deal worth about $8.2 billion, with founder Fei-Fei Li set to join the chipmaker as executive vice president and chief scientist.
Advanced Micro Devices has agreed to acquire World Labs, the artificial intelligence research lab led by computer vision pioneer Dr Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $8.2 billion, the chipmaker announced on Monday.
AMD said it had entered a definitive agreement to buy the San Francisco-based lab, which develops spatial-intelligence models that generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image and video inputs, alongside technology for robotic learning and simulation. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Reuters
Once the transaction closes, Dr Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to chair and chief executive Dr Lisa Su. The World Labs team will continue its model research inside AMD. AMD newsroom
“Building the compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving,” Dr Su said in a statement. “Fei-Fei and the World Labs team bring exceptional research leadership and model expertise.”
“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,” Dr Li said.
The move deepens AMD’s push into physical AI and robotics, where emerging workloads around reasoning, simulation and spatial models are placing new demands on computing infrastructure. AMD said World Labs’ expertise would give it deeper insight into how those workloads are evolving and help shape its hardware, software and systems roadmaps, advancing its strategy to deliver AI infrastructure for an open ecosystem. MarketWatch
World Labs raised $1 billion in a funding round earlier this year, according to Reuters.
Sources
- Reuters: “AMD to acquire Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs in $8.2 billion deal” — https://www.reuters.com/technology/amd-acquire-fei-fei-lis-world-labs-82-billion-deal-2026-09-28/
- AMD newsroom: “AMD to Acquire World Labs to Advance the Future of AI” (28 Sep 2026) — https://newsroom.amd.com/news/amd-acquire-world-labs/
- CNBC via biztoc: “AMD acquiring Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs AI firm in deal worth $8.2 billion” — https://biztoc.com/x/aa1ae95dab60b123
- MarketWatch: “AMD makes a big bet on the next era of AI with World Labs acquisition” — https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amd-makes-a-big-bet-on-the-next-era-of-ai-7f8a3b3c
- Wall Street Journal: “AMD to Acquire World Labs for $8.2 Billion” — https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/amd-to-acquire-world-labs-for-8-2-billion-a8d03d11
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