Everyone wants that big piece of AI pie, no matter if you’re a multi-billion company or just a small startup. In the former’s case, Team Red AMD has announced they have signed a definite agreement to absorb Europe’s largest AI lab, Silo AI.
According to the official note, they are doing it via a full cash-only transaction valued at a whopping $665 million with the main executives remaining in their positions and continuing to lead the team and work with AMD’s own AI department. With a full team of AI scientists and engineers with extensive experience, AMD hopes to bring in the knowledge and minds of various experts to further expand its end-to-end AI solutions based on open standards and in partnership with the global ecosystems.
Although Silo AI themselves were based in Helsinki, Finland, they operate in both the Europe and NA regions with specialized AI-driven solutions covering a diverse market including Allianz, Philips, Rolls-Royce, and Unilever as well as open-sourcing multilingual LLMs like Poro and Viking.
Yet, they are just one of AMD’s recent acquisitions of AI companies in the last 12 months because they have also absorbed Mipsology and Nod.ai into their ecosystem as well as investing in a bunch of other AI companies with over US$125 million of funding.
Silo AI and its partners are positive and excited about the takeover though as they believe joining AMD will help help address the challenges of scaling AI. Here are some of the quotes from several key stakeholders.
“At Silo AI, our mission from the start has been to build an AI flagship company. Today’s announcement is a logical next step in that pursuit as we join forces with AMD to shape the future of AI computing, we have a well-established history of building successful AI products and delivering value to our customers. 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.” – Peter Sarlin, CEO and co-founder of Silo AI
“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,” – Nishant Batra, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer (CSTO), Nokia
“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, together with university collaborators, they have trained state-of-the-art open-source models for EU languages, such as the Nordic Poro and Viking models. We have collaborated extensively with the team in optimizing the software layer, allowing for efficient training of AI models on LUMI.” – Dr. Pekka Manninen, Director of Science and Technology at CSC-IT Center for Science, Finland
“One year ago, Combient partnered with Silo AI, a leading AI lab with 300 AI scientists and engineers. Together with Marcus Wallenberg, we initiated Combient in 2015 to accelerate digitalization and AI adoption for 38 of the largest Nordic companies, with a total turnover of €270 billion, such as H&M, IKEA, Saab, KONE and Ericsson, today’s acquisition underscores the capabilities of Silo AI, opening up expanded opportunities for increased value creation in Europe and beyond.” – Mats Agervi, CEO of Combient
