As part of its ongoing attempts to create an ecosystem of AI development tools, libraries, and models around its hardware, AMD has recently bought Nod.ai, a developer of open source AI software. According to CNBC, the deal is anticipated to finalize this quarter. The specifics of the transaction were kept under wraps by AMD.
The acquisition of Nod.ai, according to AMD SVP Vamsi Boppana, would “significantly” improve AMD’s capacity to offer clients “software that allows them to easily deploy highly performant AI models tuned for AMD hardware.”
Anush Elangovan and Harsh Menon collaborated to create the Santa Clara-based company Nod.ai in 2013. Elangovan was a top engineer at Cisco and a member of the original Chromebooks team at Google. Menon was formerly employed by Kitty Hawk, the now-defunct electric aircraft business financed by Larry Page, a co-founder of Google.
Nod.ai’s first goal was to create motion tracking and gesture recognition hardware for video games. However, it eventually shifted to providing modules for AI model tools, reducing the requirement for AI developers to manually tune and deploy AI models to run across data center and edge computers, including AMD-powered machines.
Similar software-based methods for boosting AI models are provided by Nvidia. However, most of them are closed-source, proprietary, and made to work with the business’s own GPUs.
Prior to being acquired by the chip maker, Nod.ai received approximately $20 million in venture capital funding from companies like Atlantic Bridge, Square Capital, PointGuard Ventures, and Walden International. Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced businessman and co-founder of FTX, co-led Alameda Research, which is a cryptocurrency company, is said to have taken part in a capital round for Nod.ai.
Nod.ai will join the AMD AI department, which the company established earlier this year and currently employs 1,500 developers. By the end of the year, the group is anticipated to grow by about 300 personnel as AMD tries to overtake Nvidia in the rapidly expanding AI chip industry.
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