AMD to acquire AI company World Labs for $8.2 billion

AMD announced the acquisition of World Labs, a company founded by Stanford University professor and artificial intelligence expert Fei Fei Li. The deal is valued at $8.2 billion.

World Labs develops deep learning models designed to understand the physical world. The company notes that AI development requires close collaboration between research on models, systems, and computing. AMD stated that understanding advanced workloads, such as those created at World Labs, will influence the company's future plans in chip manufacturing.

Upon completion of the deal, Fei Fei Li will join AMD as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist. Last year, AMD and World Labs entered into a partnership to optimize and train inference systems.

Fei Fei Li is considered one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and computer vision. She is known as the creator of the ImageNet database, which played a significant role in the development of computer vision. In 2024, Li founded World Labs to develop deep learning models with a deeper understanding of the physical world.

The company's first product, Marble, is designed for content creation and environment simulation, which can be used to train robots.

World models can be applied in the development of AI for robotic systems, including autonomous vehicles, industrial robots, and humanoids. One of their applications is the creation of synthetic data for training robots.

The acquisition of World Labs may also strengthen AMD's position in competition with Nvidia in the AI sector. Nvidia is already developing its own models for working with the physical world, including Cosmos, while AMD previously focused mainly on models for text and video.

Source: Fei Fei Li