AMD bolsters AI capabilities with $665 million buy of private AI lab

By Kelly Hill July 10, 2024

Collected at: https://www.rcrwireless.com/20240710/featured/amd-bolsters-ai-capabilities-with-665-million-buy-of-private-ai-lab

Silo AI counts Nokia among its partners on AI projects

Semiconductor company AMD has announced that it is buying the largest private artificial intelligence lab in Europe for $665 million in cash, to bolster AI solutions for enterprise that will leverage AMD’s chips.

The move is widely seen as an effort by AMD to not only better enable its customers to build AI models based on AMD chip platforms, but to help the company compete better against Nvidia.

Silo AI is based in Helsinki, Finland and has operations in both Europe and North America; its customers include Allianz, Philips, Rolls-Royce and Unilever. The company already creates open-source, multi-lingual large language models (LLMs) on AMD platforms, as well as its own SiloGen model platform. Its partners on AI projects include Nokia, and Silo AI also works with the Combient consortium of Nordic companies—of which Ericsson is one—to provide the ability, through access to a catalog of its models, to build custom LLMs that can be taken to production.

“Across every industry, enterprises are looking for fast and effective ways to develop and deploy AI solutions for their unique business needs,” said Vamsi Boppana, SVP of AMD’s Artificial Intelligence Group. “Silo AI’s team of trusted AI experts and proven experience developing leadership AI models and solutions, including state-of-the-art LLMs built on AMD platforms, will further accelerate our AI strategy and advance the build-out and rapid implementation of AI solutions for our global customers.”

“As a leading European AI company, Silo AI has been a great long-term partner for us in many AI-related projects. We look forward to the enhanced capabilities the combination of AI technologies and innovative compute solutions from AMD will bring,” said Nishant Batra, Nokia’s chief strategy and technology officer.

Silo AI’s CEO and co-founder, Peter Sarlin, will continue to lead the Silo AI unit within AMD’s AI Group and report to Boppana.

The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year. AMD has been on an AI buying spree, purchasing Mipology and Nod.ai and investing more than $125 million in a dozen other AI companies in the past 12 months.

The chip company said that through the Silo AI acquisition, it will gain “world-class AI scientists and engineers with extensive experience developing tailored AI models, platforms and solutions for leading enterprises spanning cloud, embedded and endpoint computing markets.”

“We have a well-established history of building successful AI products and delivering value to our customers,” said Sarlin. “We look forward to becoming part of AMD to further scale our impact and develop enterprise solutions and AI models that address the most complex challenges with deploying AI at scale today.”