AMD said Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs, the San Francisco AI model and research lab led by Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion.
The chipmaker announced the deal from Santa Clara on September 28, 2026. Closing is expected by the end of 2026 and remains subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The company has not closed the acquisition.
World Labs develops spatial-intelligence models that generate, reconstruct, and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image, and video inputs, as well as technology for robotic learning and simulation. AMD framed the purchase as a way to bring model-research expertise into how it designs AI hardware, software, and systems as workloads expand into reasoning, robotics, simulation, and physical AI — and as part of its push to deliver AI infrastructure for an open ecosystem.
“Building the compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving,” Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO of AMD, said in the company’s release. “Fei-Fei and the World Labs team bring exceptional research leadership and model expertise. Together, we can use that insight to develop the hardware, software and systems that will power the next generation of AI and strengthen the open AI ecosystem.”
“Advancing the next generation of AI technology requires close collaboration across model research, systems and compute,” Li, World Labs’ co-founder and CEO, said in the same release. “Joining AMD will give our team the resources and engineering depth to accelerate our research and help define the infrastructure needed for the next era of AI.”
Following the close, AMD said, the World Labs team will continue to focus on advancing AI model research, and Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to Su.
The deal is a statement bet on model-side insight, not only silicon: a chipmaker buying a spatial-intelligence and robotics-simulation lab so research on 3D worlds and physical AI can shape its roadmap. Secondary coverage has placed that move against a broader physical-AI and world-model race among chip and platform companies; AMD’s own release does not name competitors.
What Monday’s materials settle is narrow. Definitive agreement. Approximately $8.2 billion, all stock. Expected close by the end of 2026, pending regulatory approvals and customary conditions. After close — not before — Li as EVP and chief scientist under Su. Until then, World Labs remains a lab AMD has agreed to buy, not one it has already closed.