The brAIn drAIn
Yesterday, a reasonably slow tech news day blew up in the afternoon with the announcement of US-based chip giant AMD acquiring Silo AI, a ‘private AI lab’ from Finland known for its work on open-source large language models (LLM).
The all-cash deal worth $665mn is still subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close later this year. If it goes through, the acquisition will become the largest of its kind. The closest deal appears to be Google’s purchase of UK-based DeepMind for £400mn in 2014.
The acquisition seems to make sense for AMD, whose Instinct GPU series competes directly with Nvidia’s AI hardware. Silo AI’s models — such as Poro and Viking — were trained on the LUMI supercomputer in Finland, powered by — you guessed it — over 10,000 Instinct MI250X units. Having a team of 300+ AI engineers who can work on making it easier for third-party developers to use AMD’s hardware for LLM training and deployment could very well be worth paying the $665mn price tag.
Without a doubt, the deal adds to the positive buzz around the European AI landscape. It will also create a few newly minted millionaires in Finland’s tech circle — and we know from experience that they are likely to invest in startups actively, adding momentum to the region’s ecosystem flywheel.
What’s a bit harder to make sense of is how being acquired by a US firm stacks up with Silo AI’s recent partnership announcements with the likes of Mistral AI and Aleph Alpha under the auspices of building ‘sovereign AI’ in Europe. (Interestingly, Silo’s peers raised €600mn and $500mn, respectively, in the past year — amounts not that different from the price AMD has paid.)
We’re yet to hear the company’s vision in regards to its Europe-centric projects — but it’s not very likely that it’d remain a champion of the continent’s cause. There are numerous benefits to aligning with larger players representing larger economies, but the news of Silo AI doing so still comes as a surprise.
It also once again underscores the importance of taking care of Europe's later-stage startup ecosystem, providing opportunities for companies to scale and grow beyond the unicorn mark while sticking around the region. Otherwise — and of course, this is a simplification — Europe will become a big early-stage startup accelerator with amazing mentors, but very few proper success stories of its own.
Check out Thomas Macaulay’s story on today’s deal for details and context. 👇
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