On September 28, 2026, AMD announced a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $8.2 billion. AMD expects the deal to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
AMD’s agreement to acquire World Labs
The agreement brings World Labs’ AI research closer to AMD’s work on future hardware, software and systems. AMD says the team’s expertise could help it understand how AI workloads are evolving and shape infrastructure for areas including reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI.
What World Labs researches
World Labs develops spatial-intelligence models: AI systems designed to generate, reconstruct and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, images and video. The company also works on technology for robotic learning and simulation.
Why AMD wants the research close to its computing plans
AMD says a deeper understanding of how models are developed can inform the computing platforms it builds for future AI workloads. The companies’ technical work predates the acquisition agreement: World Labs says its collaboration with AMD began in 2025 and included model training and inference optimization on AMD GPUs. Inference is the process of running a trained model to produce an output.
Fei-Fei Li’s planned role
If the acquisition closes, World Labs co-founder and CEO Fei-Fei Li is expected to become AMD’s executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting to CEO Lisa Su. World Labs says co-founders Justin Johnson and Ben Mildenhall are expected to continue leading its team with Li after the company joins AMD.
