AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion in an all-stock transaction, bringing the two-year-old spatial-intelligence AI lab into the chipmaker's research organization. AMD expects to close the deal by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.

World Labs, founded in 2024 and operating from San Francisco, develops models that generate, reconstruct, and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image, and video inputs. The lab also builds simulation infrastructure for robotic learning.

The acquisition extends AMD's portfolio beyond traditional CPU and GPU silicon into the model layer that runs on top of it. AMD stated the deal will provide "deeper insight into how workloads are evolving and help shape its future technology roadmaps."

What is World Labs?

World Labs focuses on spatial-intelligence models. These systems convert natural-language prompts, still images, or video footage into navigable 3D scenes. The lab also produces simulation environments that roboticists use to train control policies at scale.

The company launched in 2024 under Dr. Fei-Fei Li, widely referred to as the "Godmother of AI" for her earlier work on ImageNet and her later research at Stanford. Li has positioned World Labs as a research-driven lab rather than a product company.

Who is moving where?

• Dr. Fei-Fei Li joins AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist
• Dr. Lisa Su remains AMD chair and CEO; Li will report to her
• World Labs team continues advanced AI model research inside AMD after the close

What does the deal change for AMD?

The transaction gives AMD an in-house research team and a model stack oriented around 3D scene generation and robotics. AMD makes CPU and GPU silicon; the addition extends the workloads those chips serve beyond text generation into 3D and embodied AI.

Li's appointment as chief scientist places a prominent AI researcher inside AMD's senior leadership. AMD framed the hire as an effort to align silicon design with the trajectory of frontier models.

What did executives say?

"Building the compute platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving," Dr. Su said. "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."

Dr. Li added: "Advancing the next generation of AI technology requires close collaboration across model research, systems and compute. 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."

When does the deal close?

AMD expects to close the transaction by the end of 2026. Closing remains contingent on regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. The company has not disclosed the exchange ratio or the share-issuance schedule tied to the all-stock structure.