AMD will acquire Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 billion; Physical AI chip developer SiMa AI hits $1.45B valuation

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1:13That's Framer.com slash tcstartups. Rules and restrictions may apply. AMD is acquiring WorldLabs, one of the leading developers of deep learning models intended to understand physical reality. It's an$8.2 billion deal, and it was announced on Monday. Now, WorldLabs justified the deal in a statement saying that AI development required close collaboration across model research, systems, and compute. AMD, in turn, says that understanding frontier workloads like those created at WorldLabs will shape its chip-making roadmap. The acquisition will see WorldLab's founder, Fei-Fei Li, join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist.

2:00AMD and WorldLab's formed an inference optimization and training partnership last year, and ties have remained close. Notably, Li was a guest at AMD's CES presentation earlier this year. Lee, a Stanford computer science professor, is considered a pioneer in AI, particularly computer vision, for her work building the ImageNet database and the AI competitions it inspired. Back in 2024, Lee founded WorldLabs to develop deep learning models with a more robust understanding of the physical world, arguing that true general intelligence required a grounding in physics and the ability to understand and reason about data beyond text.

2:45In a post announcing the deal, Lee described the partnership as the result of a desire to scale WorldLabs' technical breakthroughs beyond the lab. She said, now that we have tangible proof of the possibilities, we want to do everything we can to accelerate the future. To do this requires scaling our efforts, widening our reach, and getting closer to the hardware. World model remains a loosely defined term, encompassing everything from language models trained to understand visual inputs to models capable of generating and sustaining a high-fidelity simulation of reality. WorldLab's first product, Marble, is pitched for creating entertainment experiences, but also for the ability to create simulated environments for robot training.

3:37The acquisition is likely to help AMD compete with long-standing rival NVIDIA in creating an ecosystem for AI-specific chips. While NVIDIA already has a suite of open-weight world models like Cosmos, AMD has only offered text - and video-based models to the public. World models are seen as vital in efforts to deploy generative AI models on robotic platforms, from autonomous vehicles to industrial robots and general-purpose humanoids. In particular, the dearth of useful data to train general-purpose robots means that synthetic data from world models will be key to realizing the vision put forward by companies like Tesla and Figure.

4:24The acquisition is expected to close before the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval. approval. SEMA.AI, a startup developing chips and software that allow robots, drones, cameras, and other devices to run AI directly on the device, has raised a$150 million Series C at a$1.45 billion valuation. The round was co-led by Fidelity Management and Research Company and Amplify, with participation from Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, and StepStone Group. Founded back in 2018, the company provides energy-efficient chips that eliminate the need to send data back and forth to the cloud.

5:09SEMA.ai hopes that its low-latency performance and more affordable chips compared to NVIDIA's GPUs will help it capture the growing market for physical AI devices, including humanoid robots. The new round brings SEMA.ai's total capital raised to over$500 million. The startup was previously valued at$960 million after raising an$85 million Series B back in July of last year. That's all for now. For the latest in startup tech news, go to techcrunch.com.

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