# AMD buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion

> AMD acquired World Labs, Fei-Fei Li's spatial-AI lab, for $8.2 billion in stock.

*The deal makes Li chief scientist at AMD as the chipmaker chases Nvidia into robotics and 3D-world AI models.*

By Behzad Hosseini · FeaturedDaily
Canonical: https://featureddaily.com/news/amd-buys-fei-fei-li-s-world-labs-for-8-2-billion

**What happened:** AMD announced on Monday it will buy World Labs, the San Francisco AI lab founded by Fei-Fei Li in 2024, for $8.2 billion in stock. AMD was already an investor in the company.

**The numbers:** $8.2 billion, all-stock. It's AMD's second-largest acquisition ever, trailing only its roughly $50 billion purchase of Xilinx in 2022, according to [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/28/amd-fei-fei-li-world-labs.html). The deal should close by the end of 2026, pending regulatory approval.

**Who's affected:** Li joins AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to chair and CEO Lisa Su. Her World Labs team keeps working on model research inside AMD.

**The context:** World Labs builds spatial-intelligence models that generate and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, images or video. Its flagship product, Marble, turns a handful of images into 3D worlds, used both for entertainment and as simulated training grounds for robots.

**Why it matters:** Li, the Stanford professor who created ImageNet, has long argued AI needs grounding in physics, not just text, to reach general intelligence. AMD wants that model research baked into its chip and software roadmap as AI expands into reasoning and robotics.

**The rivals:** Nvidia already ships open world models such as Cosmos. AMD and Nvidia began a training and inference-optimisation partnership on AMD GPUs last year, but this deal sharpens the competition over physical-world AI.

**In their words:** Li said: "To do this requires scaling our efforts, widening our reach, and getting closer to the hardware."

**What's next:** Su has said AMD needs a deep understanding of how models are evolving to build compute platforms for the next generation of AI. Full details are in [TechCrunch's report](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/28/amd-will-acquire-fei-fei-lis-world-labs-for-8-2-billion/).

## Key takeaways

- AMD's second-biggest deal ever, after Xilinx
- Fei-Fei Li becomes AMD's chief scientist
- World Labs builds 3D worlds and robot-training simulations

## Sources

- [AMD will acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/28/amd-will-acquire-fei-fei-lis-world-labs-for-8-2-billion/) — TechCrunch, 2026-09-28
- [AMD acquiring Fei-Fei Li's World Labs AI firm in deal worth $8.2 billion](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/28/amd-fei-fei-li-world-labs.html) — CNBC, 2026-09-28