US chipmaker AMD has agreed a $665mn (€614mn) deal to buy Finnish startup Silo AI, one of Europe’s leading artificial intelligence firms.
AMD announced the all-cash transaction on Wednesday. The Californian company described the acquisition as “a significant step” towards delivering end-to-end AI solutions. It will also give AMD new tools to compete with Nvidia’s high-performance chips.
Silo describes itself as “Europe’s largest private AI lab.” The company is best know for building large language models (LLMs) — particularly for low-resource languages.
In May, the startup launched an LLM that covers Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, as well as English and programming languages.
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At the time, the company said its ultimate goal was to build LLMs for every EU language.
“We consider multilingual LLMs to constitute a part of Europe’s digital infrastructure,” Peter Sarlin, Silo’s CEO, told TNW.
The startup’s models will now also constitute part of a US company.AMD said Silo’s team will build LLMs on the chipmaker’s platforms, which could strengthen the software link to the firm’s semiconductors.
Those plans remain subject to regulatory approval. AMD expects to close the acquisition in the second half of this year. If that happens, the deal will become one of the largest-ever purchases of a European AI startup.
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