AMD announced today the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Silo AI, Europe’s largest private artificial intelligence lab, in a cash transaction valued at approximately $665 million. This agreement represents a significant step in AMD’s strategy to offer end-to-end AI solutions based on open standards and strong collaboration with the global AI ecosystem. The Silo AI team is composed of world-class AI scientists and engineers with extensive experience in developing custom AI models, platforms, and solutions for leading companies in the cloud, embedded, and endpoint computing markets.
Silo AI’s CEO and co-founder, Peter Sarlin, will continue to lead the Silo AI team as part of AMD’s Artificial Intelligence Group, reporting to AMD’s senior vice president, Vamsi Boppana. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second half of 2024.
“In every industry, companies are looking for fast and effective ways to develop and deploy AI solutions for their unique business needs,” said Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of AMD’s Artificial Intelligence Group. “The Silo AI team, comprised of trusted AI experts with a proven track record in developing leading AI models and solutions, including next-generation LLMs built on AMD platforms, will further accelerate our AI strategy and advance the rapid implementation of AI solutions for our global customers.”
Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, with operations in Europe and North America, Silo AI specializes in end-to-end AI-driven solutions that help customers quickly and easily integrate AI into their products, services, and operations. Their work spans various markets, with clients such as Allianz, Philips, Rolls-Royce, and Unilever. Silo AI also creates state-of-the-art multilingual open-source LLM models, such as Poro and Viking, on AMD platforms in addition to their SiloGen model platform.
“At Silo AI, our mission from the start has been to build a leading AI company. Today’s announcement is a logical step in that pursuit as we join forces with AMD to shape the future of AI computing,” said Peter Sarlin, CEO and co-founder of Silo AI. “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 expand our impact and develop enterprise solutions and AI models that address the most complex challenges of large-scale AI implementation today.”
“Silo AI has been a great long-term partner for us in numerous AI-related projects. We look forward to the enhanced capabilities that the combination of AMD’s AI technologies and innovative computing solutions will bring,” said Nishant Batra, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer (CSTO) at Nokia.
Silo AI is the latest in a series of corporate acquisitions and investments to support AMD’s AI strategy. AMD has invested over $125 million in a dozen AI companies over the past 12 months and also acquired Mipsology and Nod.ai to expand AMD’s AI ecosystem, support its partners, and advance AMD’s leading computing platforms.
“Silo AI has been a pioneer in large language model training scalability on LUMI, Europe’s fastest supercomputer powered by over 12,000 AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs,” said Dr. Pekka Manninen, Director of Science and Technology at the CSC-IT Center for Science, Finland. “Together with university collaborators, they have trained state-of-the-art open-source models for EU languages, such as the Nordic models Poro and Viking. We have extensively collaborated with the team on software layer optimization, enabling efficient AI model training on LUMI.”
“A year ago, Combient partnered with Silo AI, a leading AI lab with 300 AI scientists and engineers. Alongside Marcus Wallenberg, we launched Combient in 2015 to accelerate digitalization and AI adoption for 38 of the largest Nordic companies, with a total revenue of 270 billion euros, such as H&M, IKEA, Saab, KONE, and Ericsson,” said Mats Agervi, CEO of Combient. “Today’s acquisition underscores Silo AI’s capabilities, opening expanded opportunities for value creation in Europe and beyond.”