AMD announced that it will acquire Helsinki-based Silo AI, Europe's largest private AI research lab, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $665 million.
AMD said the acquisition is part of its efforts to deliver end-to-end AI solutions based on open standards and in partnership with the global AI ecosystem. “The Silo AI team is comprised of world-class AI scientists and engineers with extensive experience developing customized AI models, platforms and solutions for leading enterprises across the cloud, embedded and endpoint computing markets,” AMD said in the announcement.
Peter Sarlin, CEO and co-founder of Silo AI, will continue to lead the Silo AI team as part of the AMD Artificial Intelligence Group, reporting to Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president, AMD.
The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2024.
“Enterprises across every industry are looking for fast and effective ways to develop and deploy AI solutions for their unique business needs,” said Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president, Artificial Intelligence Group, AMD. “Silo AI's trusted team of AI experts and proven experience in developing leadership AI models and solutions, including cutting-edge LLMs built on the AMD platform, will further accelerate our AI strategy and drive the building and rapid deployment of AI solutions for customers around the world.”
With operations across Europe and North America, Silo AI specializes in end-to-end AI-driven solutions designed to help customers rapidly integrate AI into their products, services and operations. The company's customers include Allianz, Philips, Rolls-Royce and Unilever. In addition to its SiloGen model platform, Silo AI also produces cutting-edge open source multilingual LLMs such as Poro and Viking on the AMD platform.
Silo AI is one in a series of AI acquisitions and investments by AMD, which has invested more than $125 million in 12 AI companies in the past 12 months, and has further expanded the AMD AI ecosystem with the acquisitions of Mipsology and Nod.ai.
“At Silo AI, our mission has been to build a flagship AI company from the beginning, and today's announcement is the next logical step in that pursuit as we join forces with AMD to shape the future of AI computing,” said Peter Serlin, CEO and co-founder of Silo AI. “We have a strong track record of building great AI products and delivering value to our customers. We look forward to joining AMD to further expand our impact and develop enterprise solutions and AI models that address today's most complex challenges in deploying AI at scale.”
Vamsi Boppana of AMD
“Silo AI, a leading European AI company, has been a great long-term partner to us on many AI-related projects, and we look forward to the enhanced capabilities that the combination of their AI technologies with AMD's innovative computing solutions will bring,” said Nishant Batra, chief strategy and technology officer, Nokia.
“Silo AI is a pioneer in scaling large-scale language model training on LUMI, Europe's fastest supercomputer with over 12,000 AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs,” said Dr. Pekka Manninen, Director of Science and Technology at CSC-IT Science Center in Finland. “Together with university collaborators, they have trained state-of-the-art open source models for EU languages, including the Nordic Poro and Viking models. We have worked extensively with the team to optimize the software layer to enable efficient training of AI models on LUMI.”
“A year ago, Combient partnered with Silo AI, a leading AI lab with 300 AI scientists and engineers. We founded Combient in 2015 together with Marcus Wallenberg to accelerate digitalization and AI adoption for 38 of the largest companies in the Nordics with combined sales of €270 billion, including H&M, IKEA, Saab, KONE and Ericsson,” said Mats Agervi, CEO of Combient. “Today's acquisition highlights Silo AI's capabilities and expands our opportunities to drive value creation in Europe and beyond.”
