AMD snaps up Fei-Fei Li's startup in $8.2 billion physical AI push

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.