Details of the deal remain hush-hush and Brium isn’t exactly a household name. The outfit has been operating in stealth and only popped its head above the parapet in late 2024 with a single blog post grumbling about how AI software is heavily bent around Nvidia’s hardware.

The startup builds machine learning tools designed to get AI inference models to run across various kinds of chips, not just those from Huang’s empire. It’s trying to help retro-fit AI software to play nice with AMD gear like Instinct GPUs, which often get overlooked because everyone’s workloads are already dialled in for Nvidia.

Chipzilla’s biggest rival said in a statement that the acquisition aligns with its push to build a “high-performance, open AI software ecosystem that empowers developers and drives innovation.” 

Brium’s only public words include: "It remains a challenge to harness AMD GPU performance in practice as workloads are typically tuned extensively with Nvidia GPUs in mind."

The buyout marks AMD’s fourth strategic acquisition aimed at beefing up its AI credentials. It previously acquired Silo AI, Nod.AI, and Mipsology which are all part of its ongoing crusade to loosen Nvidia’s grip and offer a more open-source-friendly alternative.

Given Nvidia's current dominance, anything that helps developers stop writing exclusively for CUDA and start thinking outside the green box is bound to turn a few heads. With Brium on board, AMD is making a play to be taken seriously as an AI contender rather than just the other graphics card company.

It is unclear at this point how much the deal cost AMD.