Amazon has reached an agreement to acquire chip maker and AI model compression company Perceive from Xperi for $80 million in cash.
Perceive is a San Jose, Calif.-based subsidiary of technology company Xperi.
The deal was disclosed Friday afternoon in a filing by Xperi with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The acquisition is structured as an asset purchase agreement, scheduled to close by the end of the year.
Perceive specialises in technology for serving large artificial intelligence models on edge devices, hardware that often operates with limited power, processing, connectivity, and storage on the boundaries of networks.
Amazon isn’t saying exactly what it has in mind for the technology.
“We’re excited to have signed a deal to acquire Perceive and bring over its talented team to join our efforts to bring large language models and multi-modal experiences to devices capable of running on the edge,” an Amazon spokesperson said.
Xperi had been seeking a buyer for Perceive since earlier this year. Most of Perceive’s 44 employees are expected to join Amazon after the deal closes.
Amazon says it does not expect the deal to require regulatory approval, describing it as a routine acquisition.