AMD Acquires World Labs for $8.2 Billion, Fei-Fei Li to Serve as AMD Chief Scientist

BlockBeats news, September 29 — According to Reuters, AMD announced it will acquire AI startup World Labs, founded by AI scientist Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at $8.2 billion, expected to close by the end of 2026. After the deal is completed, Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to CEO Lisa Su.

World Labs primarily develops "world models," AI software capable of generating, reconstructing, and understanding three-dimensional environments, enabling AI applications to operate in the physical world. The related technology can be used in areas such as robot training, scientific discovery, and factory equipment. The company was founded in 2024 and currently has about 70 employees, including the robotics expert team that joined after its acquisition of robotics software startup SceniX in July this year.

Lisa Su said AMD hopes to gain Fei-Fei Li's research team, AI models, and industry insights through the acquisition of World Labs, and combine them with AMD's hardware, software, and systems capabilities to help the company plan future hardware products. She said: "The deeper your understanding of end-to-end systems, the better systems you can build." AMD also plans in the future to provide customers with open-source and proprietary AI models.

Fei-Fei Li said that as World Labs' scale and goals expand, the company's demand for computing power is also growing; merging with AMD can accelerate the cycle of coordinated software and hardware development. The acquisition will also expand AMD's products and services for data center customers, enabling it to provide more components needed to build and operate AI infrastructure.

AMD is currently Nvidia's main challenger in the AI accelerator market, but its market share still lags significantly. Nvidia recently agreed to acquire AI startup Hugging Face for about $13 billion. Driven by expectations of growing AI spending, AMD's stock price has nearly tripled this year, with the company valued at about $1 trillion; Nvidia's market value exceeds $5 trillion.