---
title: AMD to Acquire World Labs for $8.2 Billion, Adding Fei-Fei Li as Chief Scientist
url: https://www.dataloco.com/en/amd-to-acquire-world-labs-for-82-billion-adding-fei-fei-li-as-chief-scientist
published: 2026-10-01T15:22:38+00:00
language: en
section: AI
source: https://www.tmtpost.com/8154886.html
organizations: AMD, World Labs, NVIDIA, Lisa Su, Fei-Fei Li, Meta
publisher: Dataloco
---

# AMD to Acquire World Labs for $8.2 Billion, Adding Fei-Fei Li as Chief Scientist

AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs, the spatial intelligence startup founded by Fei-Fei Li, in a deal valued at approximately $8.2 billion, the companies announced on September 28. The transaction, structured as an all-stock deal, is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. Upon completion, Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as an executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to AMD Chairman and CEO Lisa Su. The acquisition is intended to strengthen AMD's position in the emerging field of physical artificial intelligence, where models must understand three-dimensional space, object relationships, and real-world physics. World Labs, founded in 2024 and based in Silicon Valley, currently employs around 70 people, including a robotics simulation team acquired from SceniX in July 2026. The company's core technology focuses on building multimodal world models that can generate high-fidelity, persistent 3D environments from a single image, video, or text prompt.

Its flagship product, Marble, was showcased at CES 2026 running on AMD's MI325X chip, achieving more than a fourfold speedup. World Labs also developed the Atlas model architecture, which predicts the next viewpoint from a 2D image, addressing long-standing challenges in computer vision such as sparse reconstruction. These technologies demand significant compute throughput and memory bandwidth, aligning with AMD's strategy to integrate advanced AI models with its hardware platforms. AMD's investment arm had already participated in World Labs' funding rounds, including a $100 million Series C in February 2026 that valued the company at $5.4 billion. The acquisition represents a premium of roughly 62 percent over that valuation. Industry analysts note that the deal reflects AMD's effort to compete with NVIDIA, which has also been advancing in physical AI through its Cosmos world foundation model released in May 2026. The transaction underscores the growing importance of aligning AI research with underlying hardware capabilities, as chip design cycles span multiple years and require early insight into future model demands.

AMD has previously acquired other AI-focused companies, including Taalas, MEXT, and FastFlowLM, as part of its broader push to build an end-to-end AI ecosystem spanning chips, models, and applications. Following the acquisition, World Labs' co-founders Justin Johnson and Ben Mildenhall will continue to lead their teams within AMD, contributing to a new advanced AI research organization. The deal highlights the increasing convergence of academic AI research and commercial chip development, as companies seek to embed cutting-edge model capabilities directly into their hardware roadmaps.

## This story in other languages

- [Deutsch](https://www.dataloco.com/de/amd-erwirbt-world-labs-fur-8200000000-usd)
- [Português (Brasil)](https://www.dataloco.com/pt-br/amd-adquire-world-labs-por-us-82-bilhoes)