AMD announced today it is acquiring World Labs, the AI research lab co-founded by prominent researcher Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal worth approximately $8.2 billion. World Labs launched in 2024 and was valued at $1 billion within months. Its first commercial product, a world generation model called Marble that lets users create interactive 3D worlds from prompts, launched in 2025.
The deal is expected to close by year-end. Li will become EVP and chief scientist at AMD, reporting directly to CEO Lisa Su, while the World Labs team will continue to focus on advancing AI model research. AMD says the acquisition will strengthen its ability to develop AI hardware, software, and systems around the needs of emerging models and applications.
"Just like I knew it was time to do a startup to jumpstart the work of creating foundation models beyond LLMs, it's again very clear that the right path for myself and World Labs is to continue our mission as a part of AMD," Li wrote on Substack.
The World Labs deal is the latest in a wave of massive AI acquisitions. Earlier this month, Nvidia announced it would acquire Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion, signaling that chip companies are moving aggressively to absorb model expertise directly into their hardware development pipelines.
