AMD yesterday acquired Nod.ai, an open supply AI software program supplier, because the chipmaker seems to be to bolster its efforts to construct an ecosystem of AI improvement instruments, libraries and fashions round its {hardware}.
The acquisition is anticipated to shut this quarter, CNBC reports. AMD didn’t disclose the main points of the transaction.
In a press release, AMD SVP Vamsi Boppana stated that the Nod.ai acquisition will “considerably” improve AMD’s skill to supply clients with “software program that enables them to simply deploy extremely performant AI fashions tuned for AMD {hardware}.”
“The addition of the proficient Nod.ai workforce accelerates our skill to advance open-source compiler expertise and allow moveable, high-performance AI options throughout the AMD product portfolio,” Boppana stated. “Nod.ai’s applied sciences are already broadly deployed within the cloud, on the edge and throughout a broad vary of finish level gadgets right this moment.”
Nod.ai, based mostly in Santa Clara, was co-founded in 2013 by Anush Elangovan and Harsh Menon. Elangovan was a part of the primary Chromebooks workforce at Google and a lead engineer at Cisco. Menon beforehand labored at Kitty Hawk, the now-defunct electrical plane firm backed by Google co-founder Larry Web page.
Nod.ai initially sought to construct gaming-focused gadgets for gesture recognition and movement monitoring. However it will definitely pivoted to AI mannequin tooling, constructing modules to scale back the necessity for AI builders to manually optimize and deploy AI fashions to run throughout knowledge middle and edge machines — together with AMD-powered machines.
AMD rival Nvidia gives comparable software-based options for accelerating AI fashions. However they’re largely closed-source, proprietary and designed to work with the corporate’s personal GPUs.
Nod.ai had raised over $20 million in enterprise funding previous to the AMD acquisition, together with from Atlantic Bridge, Sq. Capital, Pointguard Ventures, and Walden Worldwide. Alameda Analysis, the cryptocurrency agency co-led by disgraced entrepreneur and FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, reportedly participated in a Nod.ai funding spherical. However in December, Elangovan informed the Monetary Occasions that Nod.ai “[wasn’t] a recipient of FTX/Alameda funding.”
“At Nod.ai, we’re a workforce of engineers targeted on drawback fixing — rapidly — and transferring at tempo in an business of fixed change to develop options for the subsequent set of issues,” Elangovan, who serves as Nod.ai’s CEO, stated in a press launch. “Our journey as an organization has cemented our position as the first maintainer and main contributor to a number of the world’s most necessary AI repositories. By becoming a member of forces with AMD, we are going to carry this experience to a broader vary of shoppers on a world scale.”
Nod.ai will be part of the AI group that AMD created earlier this yr, which employs about 1,500 engineers at current. The group’s anticipated to be expanded by round 300 workers by the top of the yr as AMD races to meet up with Nvidia within the exploding marketplace for AI chips.