AMD agrees to buy World Labs for about $8.2 billion; Fei-Fei Li to become chief scientist after closing
The all-stock deal would bring a spatial-intelligence research team into AMD to inform chip and system design. Closing is expected by year-end, subject to regulatory approval and other conditions.
AMD announced an agreement to acquire World Labs, co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, for about $8.2 billion in stock on the afternoon of September 28 in US Eastern time, September 29 in Shanghai. Its 8-K filing says the merger agreement was signed on September 26. This was an announcement of an agreement, not a completed acquisition. AMD expects closing by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and other customary conditions.
World Labs develops spatial-intelligence models that generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, images or video, alongside robotics-learning and simulation technology. AMD says AI workloads are diversifying into reasoning, robotics and simulation. It wants the research team’s understanding of these workloads to inform its hardware, software and systems.
After closing, the World Labs team would continue AI model research, and Li would become AMD’s executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to Lisa Su. These arrangements remain conditional on closing. The announcement gives no new customer product, quantified performance improvement or public availability date.
Sources
- AMD to Acquire World Labs to Advance the Future of AI Compute — AMD
- September 28, 2026 — Form 8-K — AMD / SEC filing
- AMD收購World Labs以推進AI運算未來發展 — AMD