AMD Acquires Brium to Challenge Nvidia's AI Hardware Dominance

AMD takes aim at Nvidia's AI hardware dominance with Brium acquisition | TechCrunch

AMD's latest acquisition could help reduce Nvidia's market dominance when it comes to AI hardware. Semiconductor giant AMD on Wednesday announced it acquired AI software optimization startup Brium. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Brium is a startup that appears to be in stealth mode. The startup builds machine learning applications to enable AI inference, the process a trained AI model uses to draw conclusions from new data, across a variety of different hardware options, according to a blog post on Brium's bare-bones website. Cutting through that jargon a bit, Brium can help retrofit AI software to work with different AI hardware than it might have been designed for originally. In a press release, AMD said its acquisition of Brium will help its commitment to "building a high-performance, open AI software ecosystem that empowers developers and drives innovation." While AMD is saying that this acquisition helps create a more open AI ecosystem, which isn't wrong, it seems clear that it's also meant to help AMD overcome one of its biggest roadblocks: a large percentage of AI software is being designed for Nvidia hardware and chips. Brium's sole blog post, which came out in November 2024, talked about the industry's reliance on Nvidia and called out AMD specifically. "In recent years, the hardware industry has made strides towards providing viable alternatives to Nvidia hardware for server-side inference," the blog post reads. "Solutions such as AMD's Instinct GPUs offer strong performance characteristics, but it remains a challenge to harness that performance in practice as workloads are typically tuned extensively with Nvidia GPUs in mind. At Brium, we intend to enable efficient [model] inference across a range of hardware architectures." This is AMD's fourth strategic acquisition in the past two years toward the company's goal of fostering an open-source AI ecosystem, according to the press release. The company previously acquired Silo AI (in July 2024), Nod.AI (October 2023), and Mipsology (August 2023). TechCrunch has reached out to AMD for more information.

AMD Makes Another Software Acquisition To Bolster Their AI & Compiler Talent

"Brium brings advanced software capabilities that strengthen our ability to deliver highly optimized AI solutions across the entire stack. Their work in compiler technology, model execution frameworks, and end-to-end AI inference optimization will play a key role in enhancing the efficiency and flexibility of our AI platform. This acquisition strengthens our foundation for long-term innovation. It reflects our strategic commitment to AI, particularly to the developers who are building the future of intelligent applications. It is also the latest in a series of targeted investments, following the acquisitions of Silo AI, Nod.ai, and Mipsology, that together advance our ability to support the open-source software ecosystem and deliver optimized performance on AMD hardware."

AMD's Acquisition Spree To Fight Nvidia Continues With Brium Buy

Anush Elangovan, corporate vice president of software development at AMD, says Brium's advanced software capabilities will 'strengthen our ability to deliver highly optimized AI solutions,' including its Instinct GPUs that have been key to its competitive fight with Nvidia. AMD is continuing its acquisition spree to challenge Nvidia's AI computing dominance with the purchase of a startup that specializes in AI software optimization. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip designer announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Brium, which is made up of "world-class compiler and AI software experts with deep expertise in machine learning, AI inference and performance optimization." [Related: Intel Spin-Off: Our InfiniBand Alternative For AI Data Centers Has A 'Devastatingly Good' Edge] Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Anush Elangovan, corporate vice president of software development at AMD, said Brium's advanced software capabilities will "strengthen our ability to deliver highly optimized AI solutions," including its Instinct GPUs that have been key to its fight with Nvidia. "Their work in compiler technology, model execution frameworks and end-to-end AI inference optimization will play a key role in enhancing the efficiency and flexibility of our AI platform," he wrote in a blog post. The major advantage AMD sees with Brium is the startup's "ability to optimize the entire inference stack before the model reaches the hardware," according to Elangovan. "This reduces dependence on specific hardware configurations and enables faster, more efficient out-of-the-box AI performance across a wide range of deployments," he said. Elangovan said the Brium team will "immediately contribute to key projects like OpenAI Triton, WAVE DSL and SHARK/IREE," which are "essential to enabling faster, more efficient execution of AI models on AMD Instinct GPUs." "By focusing on new precision formats like MX FP4 and FP6, we are equipping our AI platform to handle emerging workloads in training and inference more effectively, helping developers achieve higher performance while maintaining efficiency and cost-effectiveness," he wrote. The Brium acquisition will also help "accelerate the open-source tools" underlying AMD's AI software stack and advance its mission to support the specialized needs of customers in verticals ranging from health care and life sciences to finance and manufacturing. "Their successful porting of the Deep Graph Library (DGL) to [the] AMD Instinct platform is a clear example of how they enable cutting-edge AI applications in health sciences," Elangovan said. "This kind of domain-specific expertise enhances our ability to deliver optimized solutions for high-value industries, broadening our market reach and strengthening our position as a trusted partner across a diverse range of sectors." While AMD's announcement and Brium's website didn't contain any details about the startup's founding team, the LinkedIn profile for Brium co-founder and CTO Quentin Colombet said he has nearly a decade of experience of developing compilers and compiler optimizations for GPUs and accelerator chips at Google, Meta and Apple. Much of this work has been focused on machine learning. Brium is the latest in a string of acquisitions AMD has made over the last couple years to boost its competitive stance against Nvidia, whose command of the AI market allowed the rival to earn more than double the revenue of AMD and Intel combined last year. The most recent acquisitions include silicon photonics startup Enosemi and data center infrastructure provider ZT Systems, both of which closed this year. Prior to that, AMD acquired three software firms -- Silo AI, Nod.ai and Mipsology -- to improve its software stack. "This is more than just a software play, it's about delivering real value to customers, driving adoption of AMD platforms and helping define the next era of AI computing," said Elangovan, who was founder and CEO of Nod.ai prior to joining AMD.