Dive Brief:
- AMD will spend $4.9 billion to acquire cloud architecture solution provider ZT Systems, the chipmaker announced Monday. The move will add 1,000 cloud data center engineers to AMD’s talent pool, expanding the company’s hyperscaler reach as it accelerates GPU deployments.
- “The ZT team complements our silicon and software capabilities with critical systems expertise needed to deliver full AI solutions, from silicon to software to rack and cluster level solutions,” AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su said during a Monday investor call. “With ZT, our largest hyperscale customers will be able to more rapidly deploy AMD AI infrastructure.”
- AMD expects to close the transaction in the first half of 2025 subject to regulatory approval. While AMD plans to integrate ZT Systems’ design and engineering units, it will seek a strategic partner to acquire its $10 billion-per-year data center infrastructure manufacturing business, Su said.
Dive Insight:
As the race to deliver AI-optimized infrastructure heats up, AMD positioned itself as the primary challenger to Nvidia’s GPU dominance.
AMD raised the stakes with the December release of its GPU-powered MI300 series chipset and followed up by committing to an aggressive multiyear strategy for further silicon enhancements in June.
With AI driving massive infrastructure buildouts across the hyperscaler landscape, AMD saw its data center revenues balloon 115% year over year to a record $2.8 billion in the second quarter. The MI300 is now the “fastest ramping product” in company history, Su said Monday.
Nvidia’s AI business nevertheless dwarfed AMD’s during the first half of the year. After introducing its Blackwell GPU family in March, Nvidia saw revenues skyrocket 262% year over year to $26 billion during the three-month period ending April 28. AMD, in contrast, reported $5.8 billion in total revenue during the three-month period ending June 29.
The ZT Systems acquisition is part of a broader push to catch up with the rival chipmaker.
AMD spent $665 million to acquire Europe-based AI company Silo AI in a July deal that closed last week. The acquisition bolstered AMD’s software capabilities and added 300 AI scientists to its ranks.
ZT Systems’ architecting capabilities round out AMD’s multipronged AI strategy, Su said.
“For our customers, it’s about silicon, software and system solutions — all three pieces of it,” Su said. “What we're trying to do is make it as easy as possible for our customers to deploy quickly with our silicon capability, our software capability, and now our system solutions capability.”
