AMD announced today that it will acquire World Labs, an AI research lab co-founded by prominent researcher Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal worth approximately $8.2 billion. World Labs launched in 2024 and was valued at $1 billion within months. The startup launched its first commercial product, a world-generation model called Marble that allows users to create interactive 3D worlds in an instant, in 2025.
The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Li will become executive vice president and chief scientist at AMD, reporting to AMD CEO Lisa Su, while the World Labs team will “continue to focus on advancing AI modeling research.” AMD also notes that the acquisition will strengthen “its ability to develop hardware, software and AI systems around the needs of emerging models and applications.”
“Just as I knew it was time to create a startup to push core modeling work beyond LLMs and make the biggest impact in AI, it is again very clear that the right path for me and World Labs is to continue our mission as part of AMD,” Li says in a post on his Substack. “Together we are committed to continuing to push the frontier of AI to solve real problems, and to do so openly with the community and the entire ecosystem.”
“Building the computing platforms for the next generation of AI requires a deep understanding of how models are evolving,” Su says in a statement. “Fei-Fei and the World Labs team bring exceptional research leadership and modeling expertise. Together, we can use that information to develop the hardware, software and systems that will drive the next generation of AI and strengthen the open AI ecosystem.”
The World Labs deal is just the latest multibillion-dollar AI-related acquisition in recent memory, with Nvidia announcing earlier this month that it would acquire Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion.
