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AMD acquires European AI startup for $665 million

On July 10, according to British industry news, AMD will acquire Finnish artificial intelligence (AI) startup Silo AI for $665 million, intending to expand its AI services to compete with market leader Nvidia.




















This is the largest acquisition of a private AI startup in Europe since Google acquired the UK's DeepMind for about 400 million pounds in 2014.

It is understood that Silo AI, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, is one of the largest private AI laboratories in Europe, providing tailor-made AI models and platforms for corporate customers. The Finnish company launched a program last year to offer master's degree programs in law in European languages ​​such as Swedish, Icelandic and Danish.

Silo AI is committed to "open source" AI models, which are available for free and can be customized by anyone. This is different from companies such as OpenAI and Google, which prefer their own proprietary or "closed" models.

AMD said that 300 members of Silo AI will use its software tools to build customized large language models (LLMs). The all-cash acquisition is expected to be completed in the second half of this year, but it still needs to be approved by regulators.

Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of AMD's artificial intelligence business group, said the deal will help the company accelerate its engagement and deployment with customers, as well as its own AI technology.

AMD's AI technology competes with Nvidia, which occupies most of the market share of high-performance chips. Nvidia's success has pushed its market value to over $3 trillion this year, and technology companies are currently working to build the computing infrastructure needed to power the largest AI models. AMD began launching the MI300 chip at the end of last year, directly challenging Nvidia's Hopper series of chips.

The deal with Silo shows that AMD is looking to rapidly scale its business and drive customer engagement through its own products. AMD sees Silo, which builds customized models for customers, as a link between its "foundational" AI software and the technology's real-world applications.