AMD plans to acquire Finnish AI startup Silo AI for approximately $665 million, the US tech giant announced this week. The acquisition is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

Silo AI is a private AI lab with four offices in Europe and over 300 employees, including 125 AI scientists with PhDs in their respective fields, according to the company's website. The startup is working on various areas within artificial intelligence, including "computer vision," large language models (LLMs), and machine learning. Silo CEO and co-founder Peter Sarlin will remain at the company and report to AMD SVP Vamsi Boppana.

Boppana tells Reuters the Silo acquisition helps AMD unlock "a significant amount of business moving forward." Silo has already developed LLMs using AMD's tech and will continue to build new AI models and AI products for businesses post-acquisition.

Last year, Silo released Poro, an open-source LLM that understands Finnish and English as well as the Python and Java programming languages. This year, Silo announced Viking, an LLM for Nordic languages.

“Silo AI has been a pioneer in scaling large language model training on LUMI, Europe’s fastest supercomputer powered by over 12,000 AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs,” Pekka Manninen, director of science and technology at Finland's CSC-IT Center for Science, said in a statement.

AMD's substantial Silo purchase dramatically increases its AI spend. In the past year, AMD invested over $125 million and acquired two other AI firms, Mipsology and Nod.AI.

AMD rivals Nvidia, Apple, and Intel are also splashing out on AI investments. In May, Nvidia announced its acquisition of Israeli AI firm Deci for roughly $300 million and Israeli-American firm Run:AI for $700 million. Apple has also been on an AI acquisition spree for decades, and bought Canadian startup DarwinAI earlier this year for an undisclosed sum.

By: DocMemory
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