From Ars Technica · · 1m 40s
AMD buys World Labs for $8.2 billion
AMD acquires Fei-Fei Li's world models startup to compete with Nvidia in AI chips and robotics simulation.
In brief
AMD acquires Fei-Fei Li's world models startup to compete with Nvidia in AI chips and robotics simulation. AMD is acquiring World Labs, the AI startup founded by Fei-Fei Li, for eight point two billion dollars to gain world models expertise and compete with Nvidia in robotics and simulation. Originally reported by Ars…
AMD buys World Labs
Chipmaker AMD announced it will acquire AI company World Labs by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval. The deal is valued at eight point two billion dollars.
World Labs founded in 2024
Computer vision scientist Fei-Fei Li founded World Labs in 2024 with fellow researchers Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner, and Ben Mildenhall. The startup raised two hundred thirty million dollars in funding, some from AMD.
World models simulate reality
World Labs develops world models, AI systems that aim to provide useful, predictive simulations of the physical world. The company's first public tool, Marble, generates three D spaces using Gaussian splats for film and game development.
Robotics is the real prize
Nvidia leads in synthetic data for robot training, a field where AMD lags. AMD has made Micro-World, an open source world model, but lacks a stack competing with Nvidia's Cosmos. This acquisition closes that gap.
Li becomes AMD executive
Fei-Fei Li will become executive vice president and chief scientist at AMD. Justin Johnson and Ben Mildenhall will continue leading the World Labs team as it joins AMD to form a world-leading frontier research organization.
AMD shapes future roadmaps
AMD says World Labs' expertise in advanced models will give it deeper insight into how workloads evolve as AI expands into reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, helping shape its future technology roadmaps.
“As AI expands into reasoning, robotics, simulation and physical AI, the demands on compute infrastructure become more diverse.”
The big picture
AMD is acquiring World Labs, the AI startup founded by Fei-Fei Li, for eight point two billion dollars to gain world models expertise and compete with Nvidia in robotics and simulation.
