AMD is acquiring World Labs. Congratulations to you both.
Thank you. Lisa, I think a pretty obvious place to start is why? Why is AMD acquiring World Labs? Well, first Ed, thanks for having us. And today's a super exciting day. I can tell you that, you know, we are super excited to be acquiring World Labs. I have known Feifei for a long time. I've had tremendous respect, you know, for her as a researcher and as a visionary. And if you think about where AI is today, I mean, we are, you know, 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, you know, 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 Feifei has brought together and really bring it together with AMD's complete capabilities around hardware, software and systems and, you know, build the future of AI.
I think we should get to the back story with both of you. But would you talk a little bit, Lisa, how it came about? You know, the catalyst for doing the actual transaction?
Well, as I said, I've had a tremendous respect for Feifei. I mean, you know, everyone knows just how much she has contributed to AI over the last couple of decades and from, you know, our personal relationship, we've always had that, you know, both mutual respect and trust. But what we've saw is, you know, AMD was an early investor in World Labs. So, you know, we saw Feifei build when there were only, you know, just a very few researchers and really building to the team with Marvel. 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, you know, already our very talented, you know, AMD workforce. So I was thrilled, thrilled that, you know, Feifei and her founders were excited about joining AMD.
And Feifei, reflect on that. I mean, you and I have spoken very recently. This, of course, did not come up, but I suppose you know, 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 to be a part of AMD?
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 was 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 multi-model, omni model for our 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 forces with AMD, we really are giving ourselves and AMD in the ecosystem an opportunity to accelerate this flywheel between software and hardware development, which is critical, critical for today's AI development.
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 two 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?
Yeah, well, I think if you take a step back and just look at what we're trying to achieve, you know, across this AI ecosystem, I mean, it's a tremendous opportunity. A lot of the focus today has been on, you know, large language models. You know, really the large foundational model labs, you know, we have a very deep and special relationship with, you know, folks like OpenAI and Anthropic in this. And then you have labs like what, you know, Feifei has built with World Labs, which is actually, you know, 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, you know, Feifei and her team have done in this area are things that we will continue. But I also see it as a nucleus for, you know, as you know, for the size and scope of our ambition at AMD, having a world class research team and, you know, based team will be the nucleus of our, you know, 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. And so I view this as, you know, both a big vote of confidence for, you know, just the work that's already been done. But even more importantly, what we will do together across the entire, you know, AI ecosystem.
A lot of people will not have seen this coming. Feifei, I actually think there's a lot of value in saying, where did World Labs get to to date, you know, from founding to present day? You've been through some of your own M&A activity to grow the team? Yes. So where do we sit today with World Labs? What is the specialism and the work you're focused on?
Yeah. So World Labs is a frontier model company specializing in spatial and physical intelligence. I was just here talking about our latest model called Atlas, which is a first of its kind, multimodal omni model that can generate beautiful pixels, but also have the incredible 3D, 4D consistency and allows cameras and agents to interact within these worlds. So we were founded in 2024. So we're a little more than two years old. What's really the founding principle that AI is a civilizational technology. We really believe in the positive impact of AI. We want to push the envelope beyond just the language modeling and going into spatial and physical, because we're seeing the needs for human creators, designers for education, healthcare, but also the imminent revolution of robotics. So all those is the foundation of world models. Over the past two years, we have built models and we have built team. We started with, you know, the kernel of computer vision, deep learning, large models, as you said. We also have rolled out a couple of different generations of models by now, Marvel first and Atlas. And we also expanded our team with robotics talents. We recently acquired K'Nex, where the technologists there have built a first of its kind robotic simulation workflow and cutting edge robotic policy training models. So World Labs is a very still a startup, small team, very ambitious. Like Lisa said, we are focusing on building the next generation technology. And we cannot be more thrilled to join force with AMD because, as I said, I really believe that the future of AI is this whole evolution of AI software and AI hardware. Models will gain so much by using the most cutting edge hardware to accelerate the training, the inference, the servicing. But in the meantime, hardware will benefit so much from the insight and the peek into the future of the workflows and needs of hardware.
Lisa, is it as simple as AMD taking that work and selling models? Offering software as a product?
Can I first say like, please, ditto to everything that she just said, because I think she described perfectly both the tremendous work and the opportunity. But look, you know, from our standpoint, AMD continues to be a, you know, platform and solutions company. It's hardware. We have software as an enabling capability. We have systems where if we're bringing that all together, we work very, very closely with our customers. Who are some of the leading model labs out there. So I wouldn't necessarily say that, you know, we're changing our model to be selling software. I really view this as, you know, first of all, a tremendous foundation that World Labs has built. I think we've always said we believe in the open ecosystem, and I continue to believe that that's one of the foundations of the AI innovation race going forward is you're going to have both open as well as proprietary models. AMD has been a contributor there. I think we are going to expand that contribution with World Labs as part of the equation. And the ultimate goal is, you know, with World Labs, we build better. I mean, that is AMD's goal. And our goal is, our ambition is really to define the future of AI compute and be, you know, the best partner to the largest consumers out there. And I think World Labs will make us much, much better at that, because of the insights and the opportunity to offer tremendous innovation across the stack.
This deal is expected to close by the end of the year, which isn't too far away, subject to regulatory approvals. How is Dr. Li going to be integrated into the AMD team? What will her role be? What do you picture on?
Well, I pitched her on, you know, join the most exciting AI company in the world. That's what I pitched. But look, Feifei, in addition to the World Labs team, I think Feifei has a tremendous portfolio and ability to add across AMD. So I'm very happy to say that she will be AMD's chief scientist. So executive vice president and chief scientist reporting to me. And we will, you know, really want and welcome, you know, the contributions of Feifei and the World Labs team across the AMD roadmap. And if you think about everything that we do, and one of the things I've always said is there's no one size fits all when it comes to AI, right? I mean, we talk a lot about the big cloud compute and what we're doing in terms of CPUs and GPUs. But the physical AI world, the opportunity in robotics, the end to end AI capability across cloud, edge and client. You know, those continue to be places where I believe we're going to grow a lot over the next, you know, three, five, ten years. And those are all places that the World Labs expertise is really in our sweet spot.
You need to ask, you know, the World Labs had raised significant money earlier in the year. You have had a lot of momentum. What options did you have? You know, was it always a path towards joining AMD. What did you consider?
I think from the get go, we build a company to really stick to our mission. We're very mission driven, and our mission is really to make a positive impact with the technology that we believe in. So it's not a matter of option, it's a matter of belief. And having taken this journey with AMD since the beginning, them being our investor as well as chip provider and then gradually talking to Lisa about our shared vision. It truly is the merging of the shared vision and mission. So it's not about option, it's about what we can do in the future. And I genuinely believe this is going to be one plus one bigger than two. Well, to be fair, you're bigger than one compared to World Labs. But it's really going to be a very, very exciting journey together in that shared vision.
Clearly, emphasis on open source is a non-negotiable in the direction of travel for AI. Speak a little bit more about that, Lisa. I mean, why is it important for AMD, from the company's perspective, to advocate for an open source market and environment? But also, you know, some of the models that the World Labs have worked on have been open, some have been closed or proprietary. And how you balance that going forward.
