AMD to Acquire AI Pioneer Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 Billion in All-Stock Deal, Second-Largest Acquisition in Company History

AMD announced on September 28, 2026, that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs, an AI model and research lab led by AI pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li, for approximately $8.2 billion in an all-stock transaction, according to an AMD SEC filing dated September 28 and reporting from TechCrunch, Bloomberg, CNBC, and SiliconANGLE. The acquisition, AMD's second-largest on record after the roughly $50 billion Xilinx purchase in 2022, will see Li join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist. World Labs specializes in spatial-intelligence models, deep learning systems designed to understand physical reality, with applications in robotics, simulation, and physical AI. AMD backed a $1 billion funding round for World Labs in February 2026 at a $5 billion valuation, with Nvidia also participating as an investor, meaning Nvidia stands to realize a significant return on investment. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. AMD shares closed Monday down nearly 4 percent at $608.14.

The acquisition reflects AMD's strategy to secure early insight into how frontier AI workloads are evolving, allowing it to shape chip roadmaps years in advance and compete more effectively with Nvidia in AI infrastructure. World Labs' research on next-generation models that understand three-dimensional space and physics is seen as critical to robotics, autonomous systems, and industrial simulation, all areas where compute requirements differ significantly from large language model training. The deal also positions AMD in the intensifying M&A competition for top AI research talent, following OpenAI's $6.4 billion acquisition of Jony Ive's io in 2025, Nvidia's combined $33 billion spend on Groq and Hugging Face, and Meta's $14 billion minority stake in Scale AI. Li, a Stanford computer science professor best known for creating the ImageNet database that catalyzed modern computer vision, brings both technical credibility and established industry relationships that could accelerate AMD's ability to win design wins in emerging AI applications beyond data center inference.

Sources

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Form 8-K filed September 28, 2026, sec.gov TechCrunch, AMD will acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion, published September 28, 2026, techcrunch.com Bloomberg, AMD to Buy Fei-Fei Li's World Labs AI Startup for $8.2 Billion, published September 28, 2026, bloomberg.com CNBC, AMD acquiring Fei-Fei Li's World Labs AI firm in deal worth $8.2 billion, published September 28, 2026, cnbc.com SiliconANGLE, AMD acquires world model developer World Labs for $8.2B, published September 28, 2026, siliconangle.com GuruFocus, AMD to Acquire AI Research Firm World Labs in $8.2B Deal, Shares Dip Amid Valuation Concerns, published September 28, 2026, gurufocus.com AMD Newsroom, AMD to Acquire World Labs to Advance the Future of AI, published September 28, 2026, newsroom.amd.com