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https://www.silo.ai/blog/amd-to-acquire-silo-ai-to-expand-en...
I've no idea what is going on. This is 5 times bigger than their combined AI acquisitions in the last 12 months. The only link between Silo and AMD is that Silo has been using an AMD accelerator cluster for training.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Expert talent and prob some in house tech. Mainly talent I guess which they can put to accelerating Triton development, their alternative to CUDA.
Does the desirable talent in this case have equity / future vesting equity that is a part of the price? I just wonder as many decades ago I was a part of a company who wanted to get into a market, they bought a little start up, and over the course of a year everyone quit, and the project eventually folded entirely ;) It was sorta hilarious, but also bizarre that the acquiring company didn't think of that.
Let's see if more details come to light, but a good part of that price is spent for sure on people.
It'd be hilarious indeed if they wouldn't be able to or haven't properly incentivized them to retain them.
My cursory understanding is that Silo is a developer of LLMs that run on top of compute platforms. Isn't the problem with no one using AMD's accelerators the fact that their programming environment is sub-par compared to CUDA, or even Apple's?
https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1206/am...
“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,”
I don’t know what AMD has in mind for this acquisition but I could see there being a lot of value having an in house LLM team to create models for customers to build on, run in benchmarks, and improve their products.
Since FT is paywalled and the press release link from Silo is currently pointig to nowhere: https://www.silo.ai/blog/amd-to-acquire-silo-ai-to-expand-en... I've no idea what is going on. This is 5 times bigger than their combined AI acquisitions in the last 12 months. The only link between Silo and AMD is that Silo has been using an AMD accelerator cluster for training.
Huge congratulations to the founders and what a nice mark for the European (and Nordirc) startup community. It's gonna be quite interesting to see if this works out strategically. I guess the bet is an in-house army of PhDs vs. having a CUDA - which you don't as a second mover here - and assuming PhDs tightly coupled with the hardware can outperform an open framework/ push Triton to parity to CUDA over time.
Since FT is paywalled and the press release link from Silo is currently pointig to nowhere: https://www.silo.ai/blog/amd-to-acquire-silo-ai-to-expand-en... I've no idea what is going on. This is 5 times bigger than their combined AI acquisitions in the last 12 months. The only link between Silo and AMD is that Silo has been using an AMD accelerator cluster for training.
I honestly don't understand how paywalled links get so much traction, most people probably can't even engage with the material. Thanks for the direct link to Silo AI's press release!
Imagine AMD simply put that $665M into tooling and driver development. The stock probably would have doubled.
What's the difference to what they did in this acquisition? Who's gonna improve tooling and develop drivers? PhD level AI experts such as employed by Silo AI, probably, right? EDIT: For context [0], Nvidia invested billions into CUDA development way back when it was unsexy. Clearly a second mover won't need that much, Nvidia proved the market. But a billion doesn't seem like a large sum for the potential upside of AM…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, buying this company for 600m will fix everything.
That is the most sarcastic thing I have read in weeks. But isn't getting a software stack the exact kind of thing they need? Is there no overlap in the skills at the purchased company and the skills needed to make the AMD software stack not suck?