AMD to acquire Pensando to take on rivals Nvidia, Intel in data centre chip space

Semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has announced an intent to acquire distributed services platform maker Pensando for $1.9 billion. 

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of the financial year and excludes working capital and other adjustments.  

The acquisition is seen as a move by AMD to strengthen its data centre products and rake in enterprises looking for cloud solutions.  

Pensando was founded in 2017 by four ex-Cisco engineers. It is headquartered in California, USA, with a backoffice in Bengaluru.  

According to AMDs CEO Lisa Su, the portfolio of Pensando will pair well with AMDs existing offerings.  

Su pointed out that all major cloud customers have adopted AMD's x86-64 microprocessors called EPYC. 

“With our acquisition of Pensando, we add a leading distributed services platform to our high-performance CPU, GPU, FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) and adaptive SoC (security operations centre) portfolio." Said Su. 

Some of the clientele of Pensando include Azure, IBM Cloud, Equinix, Oracle Cloud, HPE Aruba, Dell Tech, NetApp, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.  

After Lisa Su took over as the CEO in October 2014, the company had resurrected its data centre chip business to rival Nvidia and Intel. The acquisition will help AMD provide hardware and software to cater to processing and collecting internet data.  

“The Pensando team brings world-class expertise and a proven track record of innovation at the chip, software and platform level which expands our ability to offer leadership solutions for our cloud, enterprise and edge customers," Su said in a statement.  

Back in April 2021, AMD reported that its data center chip revenues had more than doubled to hit $3.45 billion, a jump of 93% year-on-year.