AMD to Buy AI Software Startup Nod.ai in a Bid to Catch up With Rival Nvidia

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced on Tuesday that it is planning to buy an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) software startup called Nod.ai to expand the tech giant's software capabilities.

According to Reuters, the move is an extensive investment in the company's critical software necessary for its advanced AI chips to catch up with rival chipmaker Nvidia.

AMD to Buy AI Software Startup Nod.ai

In a press release, AMD noted that the acquisition would bring in Nod.ai's experienced staff, who developed an industry-leading software technology, to help accelerate the deployment of AI solutions optimized for AMD Instinct data center accelerators and other AMD processors.

Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of the Artificial Intelligence Group at AMD, celebrated the acquisition. Boppana said in the press release: "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," he added.

Nod.ai's co-founder and CEO Anush Elangovan said Nod.ai was a primary maintainer and major contributor "to some of the world's most important AI repositories, including SHARK, Torch-MLIR, and OpenXLA/IREE code generation technology."

Elangovan noted that their team of engineers focused on problem-solving and moving quickly "to develop solutions for the next set of problems." By joining forces with AMD, Elangovan said they will bring "this expertise to a broader range of customers on a global scale."

Looking ahead, Reuters reported that AMD will expand the team with 300 additional hires this year and more in 2024. According to reports, this new acquisition is the second this year, as AMD also bought Mipsology, an AI software startup based in France, last August.

AMD said Mipsology will contribute to the development of the company's full AI software stack, expanding its open ecosystem of software tools, libraries, and models to pave the way for streamlined deployment of AI models running on AMD hardware.

AMD vs. Nvidia

Nvidia has gained a significant lead in the AI processor industry over the past decade through its software and the software developer community.

According to a recent report, Nvidia has "quadrupled" its Data center revenue, staying billions ahead of AMD between 2021 and the first half of 2023.

In the 2023 second-quarter earnings report, Nvidia has reported $10.3 billion worth of revenue. AMD is behind, with only $1.3 billion in revenue in the same quarter.

Adobe has recently partnered with Nvidia for its new apps and updates. Nvidia A's GPUs are reportedly helping accelerate these apps and AI effects, providing artists, creators, and others with massive time savings, specifically for the Adobe Firefly, Adobe Premiere Pro, Lightroom, After Effects and Substance 3D Stager, Modeler and Sampler.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is rumored to join other tech giants in making its own AI chips to reduce its dependency on Nvidia technology. Microsoft reportedly codenamed the new AI chip "Athena."