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AMD is acquiring AI company World Labs in a deal worth more than $8 billion
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AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs, an AI research lab co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal worth approximately $8.2 billion. Founded in 2024, the startup is expected to join AMD by year-end. The transaction signals AMD's deeper push into generative AI.
World Labs reached a $1 billion valuation within months of its launch, reflecting investor interest in AI beyond large language models. Its first commercial product, Marble, debuted in 2025. The model generates interactive 3D worlds from text prompts.
Li, World Labs' co-founder and CEO, will become AMD's executive vice president and chief scientist. She will report to CEO Lisa Su. The World Labs team will remain focused on advancing AI model research.
AMD said the acquisition will strengthen its ability to develop hardware, software and systems around emerging models and applications. Li said joining AMD would let World Labs pursue foundation models beyond LLMs. She also pledged to advance the work openly with the AI community.
Su said building compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires understanding how models evolve. She said Li and World Labs bring research leadership and model expertise. AMD plans to combine those insights with its hardware and software capabilities.
The deal matters as companies compete to influence AI from models and research tools through chips and infrastructure. World Labs' interactive 3D worlds could broaden AMD beyond language-focused workloads. AMD gave no details on product integration, financial effects or Marble's future role.
The deal follows Nvidia's announcement this month of a nearly $13 billion acquisition of Hugging Face. Such purchases show companies are seeking control across the AI stack. For AMD, retaining World Labs' talent and turning research into scalable systems will be central to success.
