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AMD, the chip supplier, has inked a massive $665 million deal to buy a Finnish machine learning consultancy called Silo AI.

It’s not every day that a professional services firm is purchased at a nine-figure valuation. The price tag reflects the surging industry interest in AI, which has emerged as a major revenue source for semiconductor vendors such as AMD. When a company makes an acquisition in a field that drives a significant percentage of its sales growth, paying a premium is not unheard of.  

The sizable exit also reflects the steep compensation packages that machine learning engineers with a proven track record can command nowadays. According to Silo AI’s website, it has more than 100 technical personnel with PhDs. AMD likely wouldn’t have spent much less if it had hired the same number of similarly-qualified engineers instead of making an acquisition, but the former approach would have taken more time.

Silo AI says that it has completed hundreds of AI consulting projects for clients. In one engagement, the firm’s engineers developed a web application to help a major consumer goods company pack products into containers with less waste. Another project saw Silo AI build a generative AI tool that speeds up the process of crafting interface designs for digital car dashboards.

Silo AI’s staffers also have experience with a variety of other AI use cases. The company says that it has built automation applications for, among others, manufacturers, water infrastructure operators and healthcare institutions. 

In a prepared statement, Silo AI CEO Peter Sarlin remarked that “we have a well-established history of building successful AI products and delivering value to our customers. We look forward to becoming part of AMD to further scale our impact and develop enterprise solutions and AI models that address the most complex challenges with deploying AI at scale today.”

The sale of Silo AI to AMD comes only seven years after the consultancy’s launch. The Finnish firm was founded in 2017 by a group of six AI experts from the academic world, Nokia and Big Four firm PwC.

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