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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has completed its $4.9 billion purchase of server maker ZT Systems.
The deal, first announced in August 2024, is the chipmaker’s latest efforts to ramp up its AI capabilities and boost its offerings against rival Nvidia.
The new subsidiary will join the AMD Data Center Solutions business unit, led by AMD Data Center Solutions Business Executive Vice President and General Manager Forrest Norrod.
“Acquiring ZT Systems is a significant milestone in our AI strategy to deliver leadership training and inferencing solutions that are optimised 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,” Norrod said.
ZT founder and former CEO Frank Zhang will become senior vice president of ZT manufacturing and help lead the divestiture of the manufacturing business.
Former ZT Systems president Doug Huang joins AMD as senior vice president of Data Center Platform Engineering where he will lead design and customer enablement teams, working closely with the AMD Data Center Solutions business unit and AI Group to accelerate time-to-market for data center AI solutions. Both executives will report to Norrod.
“We welcome Frank Zhang, Doug Huang, and the talented 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,” Norrod said.
AMD confirmed, as planned, it is also now “actively engaged” with multiple potential buyers for ZT System’s US-based data centre infrastructure manufacturing business.
The acquisition of ZT Systems marks the latest in a series of investments by AMD as it shifts its focus on AI. The company said it believes its pivot into AI will allow it to tap into what it forecasts will be a $500 billion data centre AI accelerator opportunity in 2028.
“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,” Norrod said.
This echoes a statement by Frank Zhang, then CEO of ZT Systems, last year. “We are excited to join AMD and together play an even larger role designing the AI infrastructure that is defining the future of computing,” he said.
“For almost 30 years we have evolved our business to become a leading provider of critical computing and storage infrastructure for the world’s largest cloud companies. AMD shares our vision for the important role our technology and our people play designing and building the computing infrastructure powering the largest data centers in the world.”
