AMD to Acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 Billion

The deal is expected to close before the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval, TechCrunch reported. AMD plans to keep World Labs separate from its chipmaking business until the transaction closes, according to Slashdot, citing CNBC. Slashdot, citing CNBC, described the purchase as AMD's second-largest acquisition. The Verge reported that the transaction is all-stock and worth approximately $8.2 billion, while TechCrunch reported the $8.2 billion value without specifying the form of consideration.

World Labs launched in 2024 and reached a $1 billion valuation within months, according to The Verge. It released its first commercial product, a world generation model called Marble, in 2025. The Verge said Marble lets users create interactive 3D worlds from a prompt. TechCrunch reported that Marble is pitched for entertainment experiences and for creating simulated environments for robot training. Slashdot reported that Li and Su demonstrated Marble earlier this year, showing a model creating a three-dimensional scene from a few images.

Li founded World Labs after arguing that true general intelligence requires a grounding in physics and the ability to understand and reason about data beyond text, TechCrunch reported. She is considered a pioneer of AI and computer vision for her role in creating the ImageNet database and the challenges that followed. She previously worked for Google leading AI research, according to Slashdot, and is a Stanford professor. In a Substack post announcing the deal, Li wrote that the right path for her and World Labs was to continue their mission as part of AMD. "Together we're committed to keep pushing the frontier of AI to solve real problems, and doing so openly with the community and the entire ecosystem," she said, according to The Verge. At the earlier presentation with Su, Li said intelligent agents, including robots, vehicles, or tools, can learn inside physics-aware digital worlds before deployment, making them safer, according to Slashdot.

AMD said the acquisition will strengthen its ability to develop AI hardware, software, and systems around the needs of emerging models and applications, The Verge reported. Su said building compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving, and that Li and the World Labs team bring research leadership and model expertise. TechCrunch reported that AMD said understanding frontier workloads like those created at World Labs will shape its chip-making roadmap. World Labs said in a statement that AI development required close collaboration across model research, systems, and compute. The companies formed an inference optimization and training partnership last year, and Li was a guest at AMD's CES presentation earlier this year, TechCrunch reported.

World model remains a loose term. TechCrunch described it as encompassing everything from language models trained to understand visual inputs to models capable of generating and sustaining high-fidelity simulations of reality. TechCrunch reported that the acquisition is likely to help AMD compete with Nvidia in creating an ecosystem for AI-specific chips. Nvidia already has a suite of open-weight world models such as Cosmos, while AMD has offered only text- and video-based models to the public, according to TechCrunch. World models are seen as important for deploying generative AI on robotic platforms, including autonomous vehicles, industrial robots, and general-purpose humanoids. Because useful data for training general-purpose robots is scarce, synthetic data from world models will be key to realizing visions put forward by companies such as Tesla and Figure, TechCrunch reported.

The World Labs deal follows other multibillion-dollar AI acquisitions. Earlier this month, Nvidia announced it would acquire Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion, The Verge reported. AMD's purchase of World Labs is expected to close before the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval. After the close, the World Labs team will continue to focus on advancing AI model research, according to The Verge.

Editor's Summary AMD's agreement to acquire World Labs for about $8.2 billion in stock would bring Fei-Fei Li and her world-model research into the chipmaker as it seeks to compete with Nvidia in AI hardware and software. The deal, expected to close by the end of the year, would place Li as AMD's chief scientist and keep World Labs focused on AI model research. It also reflects growing interest in world models as tools for robotics and other physically grounded AI applications.