AMD to acquire infrastructure player ZT Systems for $4.9B to amp up its AI ecosystem play

Source: TechCrunch

AMD, the chipmaker hot on the heels of Nvidia, announced a big acquisition to boost its position as an “ecosystem” partner for companies building big AI businesses: it is acquiring ZT Systems, which provides compute design and infrastructure for AI, cloud and general purpose computing, for $4.9 billion. The deal is a mix of cash and stock and includes a contingent payment of up to $400 million if certain performance metrics are met.

The plan is to incorporate ZT Systems’ computing infrastructure design business. AMD said it will look to sell ZT Systems’ data center infrastructure manufacturing business to “a strategic partner.” 

“Our acquisition of ZT Systems is the next major step in our long-term AI strategy to deliver leadership training and inferencing solutions that can be rapidly deployed at scale across cloud and enterprise customers,” AMD chair and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, said in a statement. “ZT adds world-class systems design and rack-scale solutions expertise that will significantly strengthen our data center AI systems and customer enablement capabilities. This acquisition also builds on the investments we have made to accelerate our AI hardware and software roadmaps. Combining our high-performance Instinct AI accelerator, EPYC CPU, and networking product portfolios with ZT Systems’ industry-leading data center systems expertise will enable AMD to deliver end-to-end data center AI infrastructure at scale with our ecosystem of OEM and ODM partners.”

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