AMD snaps up Fei-Fei Li's startup in $8.2 billion physical AI push
(Photo: VCG)
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) said on Monday it would buy Fei-Fei Li's AI startup, World Labs, in an all-stock deal valued at $8.2 billion.
The acquisition gives the chipmaker a foothold in physical AI – systems that can understand and simulate the world. It brings in work on spatial intelligence, an emerging field that teaches AI to model 3D spaces and physical interactions. AMD expects that to shape future demand for chips, software and AI infrastructure.
The technology could be used in robotics, simulation, design and other real-world applications. AMD said it expects World Labs' research to provide deeper insight into new AI workloads and help guide its product roadmaps across hardware, software and systems.
"We began a deep technical partnership with AMD last year, starting with model training and inference optimization on AMD GPUs," Li said in a post on LinkedIn.
"As our teams worked together, we realized it would be a natural fit to bring together our AI ecosystem of software and hardware, foundation models, and applications."
World Labs raised $1 billion in a funding round earlier this year that included an investment from AMD.
Li, known for her work in computer vision, will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist once the deal closes – expected by the end of 2026 – reporting to CEO Lisa Su.