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Chip designer AMD expanded its customer base in the AI industry today after announcing its takeover of Europe's largest private artificial intelligence lab Silo AI. The transaction is worth $665 million, and since it's all cash, AMD might have to rely on debt to finance the deal. Silo is an AI software company, and AMD's deal with the firm should allow it to expand its presence in the industry by powering up Silo's software with its Instinct GPUs and other AI products. AMD's shares gained 3% in trading after it announced the news, leading larger rival NVIDIA, whose shares were up by 2%.
AMD Expands AI Presence In Europe By Acquiring Private AI Lab
The deal is a big affair for AMD as it brings big ticket names, the likes of Rolls-Royce, Unilever, Allianz and Philips, into its customer base. Since Silo is an AI software firm that allows businesses to integrate the technology within their operations, by bringing it under its fold, AMD will be able to gain another important foothold in the industry and create demand for its AI chips.
Some of Silo's AI products include its multi lingual large language models (LLMs) Poro and Viking. By teaming up. with AMD, the firm should be able to grow its operations and scale its models through using AMD's resources and also accessing a steady stream of AI GPUs and other chips. These chips are the hottest commodity in the industry right now, and businesses are forking out millions of dollars to get their hands on the products.
This demand has propelled NVIDIA's shares to record highs and allowed AMD to recover from the broader semiconductor industry slump in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Silo's work in the AI industry ranges from providing the technology to the automotive, consumer electronics, healthcare and industrial users, to name a few.
AMD CEO Lisa Su shared that the Silo deal will allow her firm to further develop its open source AI software. Its rival NVIDIA has benefited from allowing users to access a chip's core components through the CUDA software, and AMD's comparable product is its ROCm open source software. ROCm, according to AMD, allows users to "enable GPU programming from low-level kernel to end-user applications."
For its part, Silo has made several important announcements this year. One of these saw the firm release its Viking AI model on Google's Cloud cloud computing platform in June. Viking is an open LLM which can function in all Nordic languages as well as in English.
Once the deal is completed by the end of this year, Silo will become a part of AMD's Artificial Intelligence Group. Its CEO and co founder Peter Sarlin will head the Silo team, and his comments, Sarlin stressed that by working with AMD, his firm will be able to "further scale" its impact and develop enterprise AI solutions.
Enterprise AI is a multi billion dollar market with more predictable demand when compared to. the volatile consumer industry. Big ticket technology players such as Microsoft and Amazon provide businesses with a variety of AI tools on the platforms.
