AMD acquires Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B

AMD is acquiring World Labs, the AI startup founded by Stanford professor and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, in an $8.2 billion deal. Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist. World Labs develops deep learning models designed to understand physical reality, and its first product, Marble, targets entertainment and robot training environments. AMD says understanding frontier workloads will shape its chip roadmap, while Li cited a desire to scale technical breakthroughs closer to hardware. The deal, subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close before year's end.