Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has agreed to acquire World Labs, a San Francisco-based AI startup, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion.
World Labs was founded by Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford computer science professor widely regarded as a pioneer in modern artificial intelligence and computer vision research.
The company develops spatial-intelligence models capable of generating, reconstructing, and simulating interactive 3D environments from text, image, and video inputs.
World Labs also builds technology designed to support robotic learning and simulation, positioning it squarely at the center of the physical AI boom.
Following the close of the deal, Dr. Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su.
Li founded World Labs in 2024, arguing that true general intelligence required grounding in physics and the ability to understand and reason about data beyond text.
Earlier this year, Li and Su jointly demonstrated a World Labs model called Marble, which creates detailed 3D scenes from just a few input images.
The acquisition positions AMD more aggressively against long-standing rival Nvidia (NVDA), which already offers a suite of open-weight world models under its Cosmos platform.
World models are increasingly viewed as critical infrastructure for deploying generative AI across robotic platforms, from autonomous vehicles to industrial robots and general-purpose humanoids.
The scarcity of useful real-world training data means synthetic data from world models will be essential for companies like Tesla and Figure pursuing general-purpose robotics at scale.
The deal builds on an existing relationship, as AMD Ventures participated in World Labs’ 2026 financing round and had previously backed the company during its Series B funding.
World Labs announced a $1 billion financing round in February, naming AMD among a group of investors that also included Autodesk, Emerson Collective, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Nvidia, and Sea.
AMD said the two companies had already been collaborating on model training and inference optimization using AMD GPUs ahead of this acquisition announcement.
This transaction represents AMD’s second largest deal on record, trailing only its roughly $50 billion acquisition of Xilinx in 2022.
The all-stock deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, pending regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
