AMD Acquires World Labs for $8.2B, Names Fei-Fei Li Chief Scientist

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AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs, a two-year-old AI startup, for $8.2 billion in an all-stock deal expected to close by end of 2025, subject to regulatory approval. The startup, founded by renowned AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, specialises in spatial-intelligence and world models — AI systems capable of perceiving and interacting with 3D environments. Li will join AMD as Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President, reporting directly to CEO Lisa Su. AMD, which already had an inference-optimization partnership with World Labs, says the acquisition will help it anticipate the compute demands of frontier workloads in robotics, simulation, and physical AI. The $8.2 billion price tag represents a significant premium over World Labs' January 2025 fundraising valuation of approximately $5 billion, making it AMD's second-largest acquisition on record.

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