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Transcript: AMD Acquires Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 Billion

AMD CEO Lisa Su and World Labs founder and CEO Fei-Fei Li sit down with Ed Ludlow to discuss AMD’s $8.2 billion all-stock acquisition of World Labs, the spatial intelligence and world models startup behind Marble and Atlas. They explain why the co-evolution of AI hardware and software drove the deal, Fei-Fei Li’s new role as AMD’s executive vice president and chief scientist, and their shared views on open ecosystems, physical AI, robotics and AI safety. Read the full transcript of the conversation below:

Why AMD Is Acquiring World Labs

ED LUDLOW: (00:00:00 – 00:00:04): AMD is acquiring World Labs. Congratulations to you both.

LISA SU: (00:00:05 – 00:00:05): Thank you.

ED LUDLOW: (00:00:05 – 00:00:07): Lisa, I think a pretty obvious place to start is why?

LISA SU: (00:00:08 – 00:00:08): Absolutely.

ED LUDLOW: (00:00:08 – 00:00:10): Why is AMD acquiring World Labs?

LISA SU: (00:00:11 – 00:01:06): Well, first, Ed, thanks for having us. And today is a super exciting day. I can tell you that we are super excited to be acquiring World Labs. I have known Fei-Fei for a long time. I’ve had tremendous respect for her as a researcher and as a visionary.

And if you think about where AI is today, I mean, we are— I’ve said often, Ed, that we’re still in the very early innings of AI. And I truly believe that. And what’s becoming more and more clear is that the interaction between the hardware and the software and the systems and the model layer are such that the more you understand end to end, the better system you’re going to build.

And so that’s why we’re acquiring World Labs, really, is to have access to the world-class talent that Fei-Fei has brought together and really bring it together with AMD’s complete capabilities around hardware, software and systems and build the future of AI.

How the Deal Came About

ED LUDLOW: (00:01:06 – 00:01:16): I think we should get to the backstory with both of you. But would you talk a little bit, Lisa, how it came about, the catalyst for doing the actual transaction?

LISA SU: (00:01:16 – 00:01:36): Well, as I said, I’ve had tremendous respect for Fei-Fei. I mean, everyone knows just how much she has contributed to AI over the last actually couple of decades. And from our personal relationship, we’ve always had that both mutual respect and trust. But what we saw is AMD was an early investor in World Labs.

FEI-FEI LI: (00:01:36 – 00:01:36): Yes.

LISA SU: (00:01:36 – 00:02:03): So we saw Fei-Fei build when there were only just a very few researchers and really building to the team with Marble and then with now the release of Atlas. And what we see is just a tremendous nucleus of capability that would be a huge addition to already our very talented AMD workforce. So I was thrilled that Fei-Fei and her founders were excited about joining AMD.

ED LUDLOW: (00:02:04 – 00:02:21): And Fei-Fei, reflect on that. I mean, you and I have spoken very recently. This, of course, did not come up. But I suppose a good starting point other than how this came together is what opportunity did you see for your work and the team at World Labs work to be a part of AMD?

FEI-FEI LI: (00:02:22 – 00:03:31): Yes. So just to echo Lisa, this relationship has been going for many, many years. It started with mutual respect and really a genuine friendship at the personal and professional level. We’re very grateful when AMD was an early believer and supporter of World Labs. But really what’s most fundamental and important and exciting about this merger is the shared vision for the future of AI.

World Labs has been a frontier model building company. We have been running as fast as we can to build the next generation multimodal, omnimodal for spatial and physical intelligence. And as our company grows, so is our ambition, so is our need for compute.

And at this point, if we can join force with AMD, we really are giving ourselves and AMD and the ecosystem an opportunity to accelerate this flywheel between software and hardware development, which is critical for today’s AI development.

The Hardware and Models Opportunity

ED LUDLOW: (00:03:31 – 00:03:59): Lisa, I think let’s get into how that would work in practice. This is an $8.2 billion all-stock transaction, but I kind of see 2 distinct things that AMD is acquiring. There is the insight into the development of models and what the future of AI looks like that helps you inform future generations of hardware separate from just getting a great team of researchers who can also then offer models. Let’s start with the hardware piece. What was your thinking there?

LISA SU: (00:03:59 – 00:05:20): Yeah, well, I think if you take a step back and just look at what we’re trying to achieve across this ecosystem, I mean, it’s a tremendous opportunity. A lot of the focus today has been on large language models, really the large foundational model labs. We have a very deep and special relationship with folks like OpenAI and Anthropic and Meta.

And then you have labs like what Fei-Fei has built with World Labs, which is actually pushing the envelope on sort of the next big thing around world models and physical intelligence. We think that’s extremely important as well. So the foundational work that Fei-Fei and her team have done in this area are things that we will continue.

But I also see it as a nucleus for, as you know, for the size and scope of our ambition at AMD, having a world-class research team and Fei-Fei’s team will be the nucleus of our AI models team, I think is absolutely critical when we think about all of the innovation that is to be done over the next decade.

I think we want to do it really with innovation across the entire stack.