World Labs, the spatial intelligence startup founded by AI researcher Fei-Fei Li in early 2024, has merged with AMD. Li, who co-founded the company with computer vision researchers Ben Mildenhall and Justin Johnson, will join AMD as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist. The merger was announced on Li's Substack.
World Labs builds AI systems that understand three-dimensional space. Unlike large language models, which process text, these systems learn from images and physical environments. The company recently released Atlas, a model that predicts new camera views from 2D images. Sparse reconstruction, a long-standing problem in computer vision, refers to building 3D scenes from limited 2D photographs. Atlas combines generative AI with techniques from multiview geometry to solve this problem.
What this merger means for AI hardware and software
The partnership between World Labs and AMD began in 2024, focused on training and inference optimization for AMD GPUs. AMD CEO Lisa Su was an early investor in World Labs. The merger brings together World Labs' models with AMD's hardware development. Li wrote that without dedicated hardware efforts, AI faces limits in efficiency and scale, and remains confined to digital rather than physical applications.
This news matters because it represents a significant consolidation in AI development. Most recent advances have centered on language models. Spatial intelligence, which enables machines to perceive and interact with physical space, has received less investment and attention. By joining a major semiconductor company, World Labs gains resources to scale its research while AMD strengthens its position in AI beyond language processing. The combined effort aims to support applications including robotics simulation, architectural design, and scientific research.
Source: To Seek a Newer World - Dr. Fei-Fei Li
Background: From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence is AI's Next Frontier