Advanced Micro Devices agreed to acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion, gaining the artificial intelligence startup founded by pioneer and researcher Fei-Fei Li, according to Bloomberg. The all-stock deal is expected to close by year-end, subject to regulatory approvals, the companies said Monday. For AMD, a key challenger to Nvidia in AI chips, the deal adds a team of leading researchers and their models, plus insight into how the field is evolving to help plan future hardware. "The more you understand end to end, the better system you are going to build," Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said in a Bloomberg Television interview, adding: "That's why we are acquiring World Labs — to have access to the world-class talent Fei-Fei has brought together and bring it together with AMD's capabilities around hardware, software and systems."
World Labs develops so-called world models — AI software that runs applications in the physical world by generating and reconstructing 3D environments, which the startup says can advance robots, scientific discovery and factory equipment. Li, its CEO and a renowned Stanford computer scientist, will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist reporting directly to Su. "As our company grows, so does our ambition," Li said, noting rising computing needs. "If we can join forces with AMD, we really are giving ourselves, AMD and the ecosystem an opportunity to accelerate the flywheel between software and hardware development." The deal also lets AMD offer a variety of AI models to data-center clients, its biggest revenue source, with Su saying the company will expand its contribution across "both open as well as proprietary models" and aims to "define the future of AI compute."
The move follows Nvidia's recent agreement to buy AI startup Hugging Face in a deal valued at about $13 billion. Launched in 2024, World Labs has about 70 employees, including robotics experts from its July acquisition of SceniX, which builds software to train robots in realistic virtual worlds. During Su's 12-year tenure, AMD has emerged from Intel's shadow in its core processor market with products rated best in the industry, though in AI accelerators it remains a distant second to Nvidia even as Su rolls out chips she says can outperform its rival. Investors, viewing AMD as a key AI-spending beneficiary, have bid its shares up nearly threefold this year, giving it a valuation of roughly $1 trillion. Nvidia remains the world's most valuable company, with a market capitalization above $5 trillion, though its shares are up about 22% this year — underperforming nearly all major chipmakers in 2026.