AMD's $8.2B move on spatial intelligence: Su and Li on the World Labs merger
Key points
Key takeaways from the Bloomberg Tech interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su and World Labs co-founder and CEO Fei-Fei Li, hosted by Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow (September 2026):
The deal. AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion in an all-stock transaction, expected to close before the end of 2026 subject to regulatory approval.
The role. Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to CEO Lisa Su, with the World Labs team becoming the nucleus of AMD's AI models team.
A long-standing relationship. AMD was an early investor in and chip provider to World Labs; Su and Li frame the merger as the culmination of years of mutual respect, trust and a shared vision for AI across the full stack — hardware, software, systems and models.
World Labs to date. Founded in 2024, World Labs is a frontier model company specialising in spatial and physical intelligence; it has shipped two model generations (Marble and Atlas, its multimodal omni model with 3D/4D consistency) and recently acquired K'Nex for robotic-simulation workflows and robotic-policy training.
The hardware-software flywheel. Li argues that joining AMD lets World Labs accelerate the flywheel between AI software and hardware — models gain cutting-edge compute for training and inference, while hardware gains insight into future model workflows.
The open ecosystem. Su stresses AMD remains committed to open ecosystems and expects open and proprietary models to coexist, citing enterprises that want optionality rather than lock-in; Li points to ImageNet's open-source history as proof that open ecosystems drive discovery and innovation.
AI safety as shared responsibility. Both frame safety as an industry-wide, non-negotiable requirement — secure hardware and data, industry collaboration on best practices and third-party evaluation — with Li calling AI "a civilizational technology".
Read more: Bloomberg Tech · World Labs
