On the heels of winning a 30,000 GPU cluster deal with Oracle, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced a move into the AI infrastructure arena, reflecting a trend toward integration — or verticalization — of chip makers and the AI factory, defined by at least one company (data center company Vertiv) the AI “unit of compute.”
AMD announced the acquisition of ZT Systems, a provider of AI and cloud infrastructure equipment for hyperscales. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the acquisition, first disclosed last August, was priced at $4.9 billion. AMD said the acquisition will enable “a new class of end-to-end AI solutions based on the combination of AMD CPU, GPU and networking silicon, open-source AMD ROCm software and rack-scale systems capabilities.” An “AI factory” is a focused and specialized method for building data centers that support AI deployment at scale.
GPU market leader Nvidia also has invested in AI infrastructure, including a multi-year relationship with GPU data center company CoreWeave, whose IPO last week was buoyed by Nvidia.
“With the rapid pace of innovation in AI, reducing the end-to-end design and deployment time of cluster-level data center AI systems will be a significant competitive advantage for our customers,” said Forrest Norrod, EVP/GM, Data Center Solutions business unit at AMD. “Acquiring ZT Systems is a significant milestone in our AI strategy to deliver leadership training and inferencing solutions that are optimized for our customers’ unique environment, ready-to-deploy at scale, and based on our open ecosystem approach that combines open-source software, industry standard networking technologies and now ZT Systems’ leadership systems design and customer enablement expertise. ”
He said AMD welcomes Frank Zhang, Doug Huang and other managers and colleagues from the ZT Systems team to AMD, “where together we will offer customers both choice and speed to market, allowing them to invest in key areas where they choose to differentiate their AI offerings.”
AMD expects the transaction to be accretive on a non-GAAP basis by the end of 2025. The world-class design teams will join the AMD Data Center Solutions business unit led by AMD Executive Vice President Forrest Norrod. AMD is actively engaged with multiple potential strategic partners to acquire ZT Systems’ industry-leading U.S.-based data center infrastructure manufacturing business in 2025.
Former ZT Systems Founder and CEO Frank Zhang joins AMD as SVP of ZT Manufacturing, reporting to Norrod. Former ZT Systems President Doug Huang joins AMD as SVP of Data Center Platform Engineering, also reporting to Norrod. In this role, he will lead design and customer enablement teams, working with the AMD Data Center Solutions business unit and AI Group.
