AMD Buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 Billion to Compete in Spatial AI

AMD announced Monday it will acquire World Labs, the AI research company founded by pioneering computer scientist Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at $8.2 billion. The acquisition, expected to close by year-end subject to regulatory approval, marks a major pivot in chip-industry strategy: rather than waiting for model developers to determine future workloads, AMD is now buying deep expertise in spatial intelligence and world models—a frontier area expected to power robotics, simulation, and physical AI applications.