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AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

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Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#51

Post by fauigerzigerk »

sva_ wrote: post #13
thenaturalist wrote: post #9

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.

Congrats to the founders indeed, but > what a nice mark for the European (and Nordirc) startup community. Not sure if it is a great win for the EU at large if their AI startups get bought up by American companies though, to be fair.

>Not sure if it is a great win for the EU at large if their AI startups get bought up by American companies though, to be fair.

That would be a concern if the plan was to move the entire team to the US. But if the Finland based company just becomes a part of AMD then I see little downside. Some very competent people in Finland now have $665M to fund new startups.

Ultimately I think the most important question is where the interesting and high productivity work gets done. That's the place that benefits most.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#52

Post by mindcrime »

sqeaky wrote: post #39
eysgshsvsvsv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You all live in a simple world where complex systems are fixed in simple statements like software stack is all they need.

Why the personal attack? I said that I interpreted the previous comment as sarcastic so I could be called out if it wasn't. The author hasn't yet disagreed. And I think sarcasm is warranted in a space that has witnessed so many bad acquisitions. On software at AMD; if my world is so simple, please explain where I am wrong. I never said this was a simple solution, I implied there was some overlap needed skills. ROCm s…

I'm curious about these "licensing issues" you speak of. From what I've seen, the vast majority of the ROCm components are MIT licensed, with a few bits of Apache license and NCSA Open Source License mixed in. Could you possibly elaborate on that?

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#53

Post by RyanShook »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #34

I've been thinking that NVDA stock is massively overpriced - yes, AI is a hot topic, but their only advantage is the software stack. It is just a matter of time until Intel and AMD realize that they should join hands and do an open-source CUDA alternative for their respecitve GPUs (yes, Intel has competetive GPUs and just like AMD and Nvidia they will try to get a share of the AI chip market share).

2024 YTD returns: NVDA 172% AMD 27% INTC -30%

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#55

Post by 627467 »

thenaturalist wrote: post #15
sva_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats to the founders indeed, but > what a nice mark for the European (and Nordirc) startup community. Not sure if it is a great win for the EU at large if their AI startups get bought up by American companies though, to be fair.

The economy and startup world isn't a zero sum game. Ultimately the AI play* is open source for the foreseeable future, even more so for AMD if they want to sell their chips. And if Silo AI's people accelerate competition in the AI HW space by accelerating Triton development/ raising the industry's competitive edge against Nvidia, we all benefit from stronger competition. And in most other European startup hot spots,…

Actually, it is zero sum. there's finite resources, human talent, and centers for decision making. yeah, European startup gets American money today, and American decision making center grows larger. whether the money paid into Europeans now is used to prop up new generation of startups - in any meaningful way - will remain to be seen. most likely: these senior staff/founders will probably allocate their cash where it is more efficient and I doubt it will be (meaningfully) in europe

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#56

Post by baobabKoodaa »

rvnx wrote: post #46
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there is some overlap. Is that overlap worth 665M?

Yes, it brought instantly (at least partially) +12B USD on the valuation of AMD. This shows to investors that AMD is still in the race.

Yeah I saw the stock market uptick, but that is a kneejerk reaction by the public markets. It's not as if the public market participants have had ample time to evaluate the merits of the acquisition, and even then, if they are right or not.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#57

Post by breggles »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #34

I've been thinking that NVDA stock is massively overpriced - yes, AI is a hot topic, but their only advantage is the software stack. It is just a matter of time until Intel and AMD realize that they should join hands and do an open-source CUDA alternative for their respecitve GPUs (yes, Intel has competetive GPUs and just like AMD and Nvidia they will try to get a share of the AI chip market share).

"AMD is among several companies contributing to the development of an OpenAI-led rival to Cuda, called Triton, which would let AI developers switch more easily between chip providers. Meta, Microsoft and Intel have also worked on Triton."

Last paragraph

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#58

Post by rdtsc »

csomar wrote: post #6
SSLy wrote: post #4

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?

Sure, buying this company for 600m will fix everything.

What do you think they should do?

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#60

Post by nicce »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #47

Happy to see this acquisition landing in Finland, but I have to wonder how the purchase price is justified. Silo AI is primarily a consulting company doing "traditional" kinds of AI consulting projects. Their LLM project is like a side hustle for the company.

Personally, I am bit sad that nothing stays in Finland. Too many promising companies have been sold into foreign countries recently. Just because founders look for exit strategy (not claiming that it is the case here). Not good for Finland in general.
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