AMD to Acquire World Labs for $8.2 Billion, Betting on Spatial Intelligence's AI Future

AMD has announced an all-stock acquisition of World Labs for $8.2 billion, marking a major consolidation in the artificial intelligence industry and underscoring chipmakers' determination to control the entire stack of AI hardware and research. World Labs, founded by Fei-Fei Li, a pioneering computer vision researcher and former Google vice president, specializes in spatial-intelligence models—AI systems that generate, reconstruct, and simulate interactive 3D environments from text, image, and video inputs. The deal, expected to close by the end of 2026 pending regulatory approval, will bring Li onto AMD's executive leadership team as chief scientist and executive vice president, reporting directly to CEO Lisa Su.