AMD is acquiring AI company World Labs in a deal worth more than $8 billion — SkimNews
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- AMD is acquiring World Labs in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $8.2 billion, announced today
- World Labs, co-founded by Dr. Fei-Fei Li and launched in 2024, reached a $1 billion valuation within months and launched its first commercial product — Marble, a world generation model that turns prompts into interactive 3D environments — in 2025
- Fei-Fei Li will become AMD's EVP and chief scientist reporting to CEO Lisa Su, while the World Labs team continues advancing AI model research
- The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, with AMD stating the acquisition strengthens its ability to build AI hardware, software, and systems around emerging model needs
- Li framed the move as a way to scale World Labs' mission of building foundation models beyond LLMs "openly with the community and the entire ecosystem"
- Nvidia announced earlier this month it would acquire Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion, part of a wave of multi-billion-dollar AI acquisitions that now includes AMD's World Labs deal
Why it matters: World Labs was valued at $1 billion within months of its 2024 launch; the $8.2 billion all-stock markup ties Li and her team directly to AMD's chip roadmap, with Li now reporting to CEO Lisa Su on hardware and systems design for next-generation AI models. The structure gives AMD a prominent research figurehead in the race against Nvidia's parallel $13 billion Hugging Face acquisition.
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