In bid to loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI, AMD to buy Finnish startup for $665M

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses AMD's acquisition of Finnish AI startup Silo AI for $665 million, one of the largest AI startup acquisitions in Europe. The acquisition aims to help AMD expand its AI services and compete with market leader Nvidia in the AI technology space.

🙋 Q&A

[01] AMD's Acquisition of Silo AI

1. What is the purpose of AMD's acquisition of Silo AI?

• The acquisition aims to help AMD expand its AI services and compete with market leader Nvidia in the AI technology space.
• Silo AI's 300-member team will use AMD's software tools to build custom large language models (LLMs), the kind of AI technology that underpins chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
• The acquisition is expected to accelerate AMD's customer engagements and deployments, as well as the development of its own AI tech stack.

2. What are the key details of the acquisition?

• The all-cash acquisition is worth $665 million, making it one of the largest AI startup acquisitions in Europe.
• The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2023, subject to regulatory approval.
• Silo AI is among the largest private AI labs in Europe and offers tailored AI models and platforms to enterprise customers.

3. How does the acquisition fit into the broader AI landscape?

• The acquisition comes at a time when AI startups in Europe are attracting significant investment, as investors seek to build local champions to rival US-based companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
• The concentration of powerful LLMs in the hands of a few US-based tech giants is attracting attention from antitrust regulators in both the US and Europe.
• The acquisition shows AMD's efforts to scale its AI business and drive customer engagement with its own offerings, as software becomes a new battleground for semiconductor companies.

[02] AMD's AI Capabilities and Competition with Nvidia

1. How does AMD's AI technology compare to Nvidia's?

• AMD's AI technology competes with that of Nvidia, which has a dominant position in the high-performance chip market.
• Nvidia's success in the AI market has been driven by its multibillion-dollar investment in Cuda, its proprietary software that allows its chips to run a wider range of applications.
• AMD has started to roll out its MI300 chips as a direct challenge to Nvidia's "Hopper" line of chips.

2. What are AMD's efforts to compete with Nvidia in the AI space?

• AMD is among several companies contributing to the development of an OpenAI-led rival to Nvidia's Cuda, called Triton, which would allow AI developers to switch more easily between chip providers.
• The acquisition of Silo AI is part of AMD's efforts to scale its AI business and drive customer engagement with its own offerings, as it seeks to compete with Nvidia's dominance in the AI market.

3. How does Nvidia's approach to AI software differ from AMD's?

• Nvidia has historically offered its software free of charge to buyers of its chips, but has recently announced plans to charge for products like its "microservices" platform, NIM.
• In contrast, Silo AI is committed to "open source" AI models, which are available for free and can be customized by anyone, in contrast to the proprietary or "closed" models favored by companies like OpenAI and Google.