AMD to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for about $8.2B; Li becomes AMD Chief Scientist
On Sept 28, 2026 AMD agreed to buy World Labs, the spatial-intelligence and world-model startup founded by Fei-Fei Li in 2024 and maker of Marble, in an all-stock deal valuing it at about $8.2B. Li becomes AMD EVP and Chief Scientist, reporting to Lisa Su. Press framed the deal as AMD answering NVIDIA's Cosmos world-model platform.
Key facts
- All-stock deal valuing World Labs at ~$8.2B; expected to close by end of 2026, subject to regulators
- Fei-Fei Li becomes AMD Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist, reporting to CEO Lisa Su
- World Labs (founded 2024) builds world models from text, image and video; first product Marble; had raised ~$1.2B from backers incl. AMD, Nvidia and Autodesk
- AMD and World Labs had an inference-optimization partnership since 2025
- Announced two days before NVIDIA's $150B buyback increase and weeks after NVIDIA agreed to buy Hugging Face
What happened
AMD bought a leading world-model lab outright and made one of AI's best-known researchers its chief scientist, moving up the stack from chips into models.
Why it matters
Chipmakers are now buying AI software platforms (NVIDIA–Hugging Face, AMD–World Labs), which consolidates the world-model race around hardware vendors.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
Videos (1)
AMD Acquires Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 Billion
Bloomberg Television · 2026-09-28 · interviewDescription by Gemini, which watched the video:
Summary
Bloomberg Television host Ed Ludlow interviews AMD CEO Lisa Su and World Labs co-founder/CEO Fei-Fei Li on AMD’s acquisition of World Labs for approximately $8.2 billion in an all-stock transaction. Su and Li discuss how uniting World Labs' spatial/physical intelligence and world models with AMD's hardware, software, and systems stack will accelerate physical AI and open ecosystem development.
What is shown
- Bloomberg studio discussion with Ed Ludlow interviewing Lisa Su and Fei-Fei Li [00:00 - 23:26].
- Discussion of the strategic rationale for AMD acquiring World Labs [00:11 - 02:04].
- Discussion on the co-design and flywheel between hardware architecture and AI world models/software [00:39 - 01:06, 03:22 - 03:31, 07:40 - 08:06].
- Fei-Fei Li highlighting World Labs' trajectory, including the Marble model, the release of Atlas, and the acquisition of robotic simulation startup ScenarX [01:43 - 01:46, 05:49 - 06:06, 07:07 - 07:22].
- Confirmation of Fei-Fei Li's upcoming role at AMD as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist reporting to Lisa Su [10:11 - 10:19].
- Discussion of open source vs. proprietary models, compute infrastructure, and safety/responsible development across the industry [08:55 - 09:18, 14:04 - 14:48, 16:08 - 17:35].
Claims & numbers
- The transaction is valued at approximately $8.2 billion in an all-stock deal (Ed Ludlow) [03:34 - 03:37].
- The deal is anticipated to close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approvals (Ed Ludlow) [09:40 - 09:46].
- AMD was an early investor in World Labs (Lisa Su, Fei-Fei Li) [01:34 - 01:37, 02:37 - 02:41].
- World Labs was founded in 2024 and is a little over two years old (Fei-Fei Li) [06:08 - 06:15].
- World Labs released its spatial/physical intelligence multimodal world models named Marble and Atlas (Fei-Fei Li, Lisa Su) [01:44 - 01:46, 05:49 - 05:55, 07:01 - 07:04].
- World Labs recently acquired ScenarX to bring in robotics simulation workflow and policy training capabilities (Fei-Fei Li) [07:08 - 07:22].
- Fei-Fei Li will serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist at AMD, reporting directly to Lisa Su (Lisa Su) [10:11 - 10:18].
- AMD achieved a $1 trillion market capitalization milestone (Ed Ludlow) [20:54 - 20:57].
Notable quotes
- Lisa Su [00:31 - 00:34]: "We're still in the very early innings of AI, and I truly believe that..."
- Fei-Fei Li [07:41 - 07:48]: "I really believe that the future of AI is this co-evolution of AI software and AI hardware."
- Lisa Su [10:11 - 10:18]: "...she will be AMD's Chief Scientist, so Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist reporting to me..."
Assessment
This is an authentic news studio interview conducted by Bloomberg Television covering a major corporate acquisition announcement. No software or hardware demos are run live on set, but both executives speak directly to the completed transaction details, organizational leadership appointments, and product roadmaps.
Described by gemini-3.8-flash on 2026-09-29 from the video's audio and frames.
Related events
- Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion ★★★★★
- NVIDIA releases Cosmos 3, an open omni-model for physical AI (world generation, reasoning and actions) ★★★
- AMD launches Helios racks with MI455X; Anthropic to deploy up to 2 GW, OpenAI online Q4 ★★★★
Sources (6)
- officialAMD: AMD to acquire World Labs to advance the future of AI compute
- pressTechCrunch: AMD will acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion
- pressCNBC: AMD to buy Fei-Fei Li's World Labs
- pressFortune: AMD acquires World Labs for $8.2 billion
- pressBloomberg: AMD to buy Fei-Fei Li's World Labs
- videoBloomberg TV: AMD acquires World Labs (Lisa Su, Fei-Fei Li)
id: 2026-09-28-amd-acquires-world-labs · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline