Wow. I hope this is blocked by the DoJ on antitrust grounds.
AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
61–70 of 284 posts
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Europe’s tech ecosystem will still benefit a lot regardless. Zero-sum thinking is not good- it causes economic regression and poverty in the long run.
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#63Wow. I hope this is blocked by the DoJ on antitrust grounds.
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Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#64This and the MI300x makes me hopeful for AMD
It really is a fantastic piece of hardware. We just need the software to catch up.
Which tbf has been an apt description of AMD GPUs for the better part of a decade. Great hardware, god awful software and even worse long term software strategy.
It's why the 'fine wine' spin on the long term performance of AMD GPUs exists in gaming circles.
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#65Happy 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.
Looking at their “about” page,
It looks like 300 “AI experts” employed. So I guess they have paid $2M a pop. I’m not sure how to put that into perspective really, though…
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#66Happy 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.
Well, in this case the purchase price appears grossly overpriced. So even though Finland lost an AI startup, it gained money that is worth more than the startup. That money will to a large extent flow back into the Finnish economy in the form of taxes, investment in new startups, etc.
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#67Huge 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.
they have loyal and stable staff with healthy family lives unlike 8 of 10 California companies
Employee loyalty isn’t a good thing. One of the best things about Silicon Valley is that people can swiftly change companies when they get higher offers. Non-competes are void in California.
There’s a reason US salaries for software devs are 2-5x EU salaries for similar roles.
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, buying this company for 600m will fix everything.
"fix"? What is there to fix? AMD has been simultaneously fighting Intel and Nvidia, two MUCH larger companies, and it's been winning the fight against Intel for close to a decade now. It's certainly not Lisa Su's fault that the clowns over at Intel got stuck on variations of 14nm (with clever marketing names like 14nm+++++) for nearly a decade, but credit certainly is hers for introducing Zen and putting AMD back on…
This site is full of people with the west coast VC-driven-tech bizarro world blinders on. If AMD just keeps at what they've been doing well (matching or beating Intel processors) instead of chasing after the latest buzzword grift bubble, they're doomed in the eyes of people with that mindset.
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#69The economic mood in Finland is downright depressed [1]. This kind of news is therefore extremely welcome because it indicates there's a way forward, out of the old industry doldrums where people are still moaning about closed paper mills and Nokia's failure 15 years ago. $665M USD isn't a staggering number by Silicon Valley standards, but it's very significant for a nation of five million people that hasn't seen glo…
Contrary to what you say, Finnish startups have been very successful. Here's just a couple examples:
- Supercell sold 81.4% stake to Tencent in 2018 with a valuation of $10.2 billion.
- Wolt was acquired by DoorDash in 2021 with a valuation of $8.1 billion.
The list is much longer with startups that currently generate revenues of tens or hundreds of millions in a year that have not been sold.
Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M
#70I'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%
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