AMD今日宣布，以82亿美元的价格收购World Labs，后者是致力于开发理解物理现实的深度学习模型的领先开发商之一。

World Labs在一份声明中为这笔交易辩护称，人工智能的发展需要“模型研究、系统和计算方面的紧密协作”。AMD则表示，理解前沿工作负载（如World Labs所创建的工作负载）将塑造其芯片制造路线图。

通过此次收购，World Labs创始人李飞飞将加入AMD，担任执行副总裁兼首席科学家。AMD与World Labs去年曾结成推理优化与训练合作伙伴关系，双方联系一直十分紧密。值得注意的是，李飞飞今年早些时候曾作为嘉宾出席AMD的CES发布会。

这位斯坦福大学计算机科学教授因构建ImageNet数据库及其引发的AI竞赛而被视为人工智能领域的先驱，特别是在计算机视觉领域。2024年，李飞飞创立了World Labs，旨在开发对物理世界有更深刻理解能力的深度学习模型。她认为，真正的通用智能需要以物理学为基础，并具备理解文本之外数据并进行推理的能力。

在宣布这笔交易的一篇帖子中，李飞飞将此次合作描述为希望将World Labs的技术突破从实验室推向更广阔领域的结果。“既然我们已经获得了切实的可能性证明，我们希望尽一切努力加速未来的到来，”李飞飞在帖子中写道，“要做到这一点，就需要扩大我们的努力规模，拓宽我们的影响力，并更贴近硬件。”

“世界模型”（World model）仍然是一个定义宽泛的术语，涵盖了从训练用于理解视觉输入的语言模型，到能够生成并维持高保真现实模拟的模型等所有内容。World Labs的首款产品Marble被定位为一种用于创建娱乐体验的工具，同时也用于为机器人训练创建模拟环境。

此次收购有望帮助AMD在与长期竞争对手英伟达（Nvidia）的竞争中，打造专用于人工智能的芯片生态系统。虽然英伟达已经拥有Cosmos等开放权重的世界模型套件，但AMD此前仅向公众提供基于文本和视频的模型。

业界认为，世界模型对于在机器人平台上部署生成式AI模型至关重要，这些平台包括自动驾驶汽车、工业机器人和通用人形机器人。特别是由于缺乏用于训练通用机器人的有用现实世界数据，来自世界模型的合成数据将成为实现特斯拉（Tesla）和Figure等公司所提出的愿景的关键。

预计这笔收购将在年底前完成，但需获得监管机构的批准。

AMD is acquiring World Labs, one of the leading developers of deep learning models intended to understand physical reality, in a $8.2 billion deal, the two companies said today.

World Labs 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 World Labs, will shape its chip-making roadmap.

The acquisition will see World Labs founder Fei-Fei Li join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist. AMD and World Labs 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 .

Li, 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. In 2024, Li founded World Labs 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.

In a post announcing the deal , Li described the partnership as the result of a desire to scale World Labs’ technical breakthroughs beyond the lab. “Now that we have tangible proof of the possibilities, we want to do everything we can to accelerate the future,” Li wrote in the post. “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. World Labs’ first product, Marble, is pitched as a tool for creating entertainment experiences, but also for creating simulated environments for robot training.

The 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 real-world 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.

The acqusition is expected to close before the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval.