AMD and World Labs confirmed on Tuesday that the chipmaker will purchase the artificial intelligence startup by year's end, subject to regulatory clearance. The agreement values World Labs at $8.2 billion.

World Labs was established in 2024 by computer vision pioneer Fei-Fei Li alongside researchers Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner and Ben Mildenhall. The founders secured $230 million in capital, including investment from AMD.

The company focuses on developing world models—artificial intelligence systems designed to simulate physical environments with predictive capabilities. These models typically require extensive video datasets for training, a methodology World Labs has emphasized in its research approach.

World Labs launched Marble, its initial publicly accessible tool, which creates compact three-dimensional spaces using Gaussian splatting technology. These digital environments can be exported as 3D assets for applications in film production, video game development and related fields. The company has since expanded its portfolio with additional models, including Atlas, which targets different functional priorities.

Synthetic data generation for robotic training represents one significant application area that has attracted substantial investment. In this domain, Nvidia holds a competitive advantage over AMD through its Cosmos platform and associated tools. While AMD has previously released AI models such as Micro-World, an open-source world modeling framework, it has not yet developed a comprehensive stack comparable to Nvidia's offerings.