AMD buys World Labs, makes AI godmother Fei-Fei Li its chief scientist
AMD has announced that it is set to acquire the AI startup World Labs for an all-stock deal worth roughly $8.2 billion. World Labs was co-founded by Dr. Fei-Fei Li, known as the “godmother of AI” in April 2024. The company builds world models – AI systems that can generate interactive 3D environments.
As part of the deal, Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice-president and chief scientist. Li is one of the biggest names in the world of AI. She is widely credited for developing ImageNet – a large-scale image dataset that helped build computer vision tech that allows computers to reliably identify objects. ImageNet is seen as a major foundation for machine learning today.
Meanwhile, the World Labs team will continue to focus on advancing AI model research as part of AMD. “It’s very clear that the right path for myself and World Labs is to continue our mission as a part of AMD,” Fei-Fei Li wrote on Substack.
AMD says that this acquisition will allow the company to work on developing new systems for the future of AI. “Fei-Fei and the World Labs team bring exceptional research leadership and model expertise,” AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su said. “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.”
This deal brings AMD more directly into AI model development as chip companies work on shaping the next phase of AI infrastructure. World Labs focusses on world models that go beyond Large Language Models (LLMs) like Claude or GPT. Instead, these models can generate and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image and video inputs. This could potentially allow for real-world applications in areas such as robotics, simulation, design and gaming.
Recently World Labs released Atlas – an omni-model architecture for camera view prediction. Earlier, the startup had launched Marble, a world generation model that lets you create interactive 3D worlds from a prompt.
With the World Labs deal, AMD is adding world-model expertise as AI expands into reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, while Li said the combined group would keep “pushing the frontier of AI to solve real problems” and do so “openly with the community and the entire ecosystem."
The AI industry is a key market for chipmakers with data centres comprising large GPU clusters to train and run AI models. But chipmakers are now pushing deeper into AI development. AMD’s World Labs deal comes days after Nvidia announced that it would acquire AI platform Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion. Nvidia is already developing its own AI models. AMD has also been making acquisitions to build out its AI ecosystem. This includes the purchase of AI infrastructure firm ZT Systems in 2025 and Finnish AI lab Silo AI in 2024.
Do note that AMD’s acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals. It is expected to close only by the end of this year. AMD was previously an investor in World Labs.- EndsAlso Read | Anthropic warns AI could pose existential risks to humanity, IPO filing reveals critical safety concernsAlso Read | Nvidia launches tool to stop AI agents from escaping and hacking systemsAlso Read | OpenAI AI agents tried to hack UN website by brute-force, attacked it 16,000 times
Armaan loves to keep an eye on everything happening in the world of tech and AI. You will find him testing new gadgets, exploring the latest LLMs and making sense of the emerging tech. When not working around tech, he will be exploring new music or catching up on motorsport or aviation.
