AMD acquires software startup Nod.ai to heat up AI race with Nvidia

AMD has acquired Nod.ai, an open-source artificial intelligence software company based in Santa Clara, California. The company announced the acquisition, saying it would help expand its AI software capabilities. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2013, Nod.ai builds open-source technologies for AI systems using approaches like reinforcement learning. The company is known for contributing to projects like SHARK, an open-source machine learning distribution built on frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow.

AMD said Nod.ai's expertise in AI model optimizations would help strengthen its efforts in providing comprehensive hardware and software solutions for AI applications.

In a blog post, Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president at AMD, said;

The acquisition of Nod.ai is expected to significantly enhance our ability to provide AI customers with open software that allows them to easily deploy highly performant AI models tuned for AMD hardware.

 

The addition of the talented Nod.ai team accelerates our ability to advance open-source compiler technology and enable portable, high-performance AI solutions across the AMD product portfolio. Nod.ai's technologies are already widely deployed in the cloud, at the edge and across a broad range of end point devices today.

Nod.ai founders include Anush Elangovan, formerly of Google and Cisco, and Harsh Menon, previously with electric aircraft startup Kitty Hawk. "At Nod.ai, we are a team of engineers focused on problem solving — quickly – and moving at pace in an industry of constant change to develop solutions for the next set of problems," said Anush Elangovan.

AMD believes the acquisition would augment its AI software portfolio, expecting to close this quarter pending closing conditions. The chipmaker hopes to better compete with Nvidia in the AI space, which has seen strong growth and is dominated by Nvidia.

During its latest quarter, which ended in July 2023, Nvidia reported over 100% revenue growth year-over-year for its data center business, including AI. In comparison, AMD saw an 18% decline in revenue, though it still beat analyst expectations.

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