AMD has announced that it has just acquired Toronto-based AI chip company Untether AI. This isn’t the usual corporate acquisition, though, where the bigger firm completely buys the smaller one. Instead, AMD only hired the entire engineering team of Untether, leaving everything else behind. Because of this, its speedAI AI inference processor and imAIgine SDK will no longer be supplied and supported, according to Untether AI’s announcement. “AMD has entered into a strategic agreement to acquire a talented team of AI hardware and software engineers from Untether AI,” AMD said in a statement to CRN. “The transaction brings a world-class team of engineers to AMD, focusing on advancing the company’s AI compiler and kernel development capabilities as well as enhancing our digital and SoC design, design verification, and product integration capabilities. We are excited to welcome the team’s unique expertise to AMD.” Untether AI specializes in building AI chips specifically designed for AI inference. While GPUs like Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra or AMD’s Instinct MI350 excel at training AI models, speedAI performs better in inferencing and is far more energy efficient than these power-hungry GPUs. They achieve that by placing the processors right next to the memory, reducing latency and power consumption.

Full report : AMD scoops entire Untether AI chip team — Canada AI inference outfit will cease product support.