AMD has reached an agreement to acquire the AI startup World Labs for $8.2 billion in stock. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals. Upon completion, World Labs will operate as a new frontier research group within AMD.
Fei-Fei Li, the founder of World Labs, will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to CEO Lisa Su. Li co-founded the startup in 2024 alongside Justin Johnson, Ben Mildenhall, and Christoph Lassner. The company previously raised $1 billion in funding earlier this year.
World Labs focuses on spatial intelligence, developing AI systems capable of reasoning about three-dimensional environments. Its first product, Marble, generates and simulates interactive 3D spaces from text, images, and video. The research aims to support robotic learning and physical AI applications.
The acquisition integrates a research team into AMD to align hardware and software development with the requirements of emerging AI models. AMD intends to leverage this expertise to design processors and systems tailored for future workloads involving robotics, simulation, and physical interaction.
