AMD buys largest private AI lab in Europe to counter Nvidia

AMD just made a massive announcement regarding its AI plans. The company has decided to acquire the largest private AI lab in Europe, Silo AI, for an all-cash deal worth $665 million.

AMD will bring Silo AI's world class team onboard its AMD Artificial Intelligence Group. That's right, the CEO and co-founder Peter Sarlin will also be joining AMD and reporting directly to Senior VP of the group Vamsi Boppana.

This is what Peter Sarlin had to say about the deal:

What does Silo AI do?

Despite being based in Helsinki, Finland, Silo AI has operations spread across Europe and North America.

Their specialty: End to End AI solutions.

Their motto: Making AI integrations easy for clients.

They are already serving big names like Allianz, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, and Philips among others. Their famous open source multilingual LLMs Poro and Viking have already made their impression on the industry.

These LLMs were developed on AMD platforms. Silo AI CEO therefore sees this partnership as a natural progression for the company.

Why Silo AI?

Building the best AI tech is a race. And no one wants to be left behind. Yesterday, we saw how Elon Musk dropped a $10bn deal with Oracle just because he did not like the pace of progress.

So when AMD tried to explain the acquisition, the first thing they mentioned was the speed of progress.

In short, AMD wants to turbocharge its AI plans and wants to work more closely with the company it was already collaborating with.

Should Nvidia be worried?

Nvidia is too big and unique to look at AMD as a threat. An acquisition like this will go a long way in helping AMD reach its AI goals. AMD shareholders should be happy with the deal, but Nvidia shareholders have nothing to worry about.

The two stocks were in sync up until May this year. That's when NVDA really took off as the clear leader in AI. AMD has some catching up to do and with this acquisition, they have clearly announced that they're here to compete.

In the last one year, AMD has returned over 58% while NVDA has performed a mind-boggling 201%.