Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced on Monday its intention to acquire the startup Fei-Fei Li, World Labs, in an all-stock deal valued at $8.2 billion.
This acquisition provides the chipmaker with a presence in the field of physical artificial intelligence—systems capable of modeling and understanding the surrounding world. It also brings expertise in spatial intelligence, a new area that trains AI to model three-dimensional spaces and physical interactions. AMD believes this will define future demand for AI software, infrastructure, and chips.
The technologies developed by World Labs can find applications in robotics, design, simulations, and other practical tasks. AMD expects that World Labs' research will provide a deeper understanding of new AI workloads and help guide the company's product roadmaps in hardware, software, and systems.
Li, known for her work in computer vision, noted in a LinkedIn post that they began deep technical collaboration with AMD last year, starting with optimizing model training and inference on AMD GPUs. She added that as the teams worked together, it became clear that merging the AI ecosystem, which includes software, hardware, foundational models, and applications, was a natural step.
Earlier this year, World Labs raised $1 billion in a funding round in which AMD also invested. Following the deal closure, expected by the end of 2026, Li will join AMD as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist, reporting to CEO Lisa Su.