AMD will acquire Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 billion

AMD is acquiring World Labs, a developer of deep learning models designed to understand physical reality, for $8.2 billion. World Labs' founder will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, and the two companies say the deal will allow them to combine model research with chip-making and hardware development. The acquisition helps AMD compete with rivals in creating AI-specific chips and access world models, which are considered vital for deploying generative AI on robotic platforms and creating synthetic training data. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year pending regulatory approval.