Amazon has reached an agreement to acquire chip maker and AI model compression company Perceive, a San Jose, Calif.-based subsidiary of publicly traded technology company Xperi, for $80 million in cash.
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 specializes 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.
“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.
Regulators in general have been paying closer attention to AI deals between tech giants and smaller start-ups. For example, Amazon reportedly drew questions from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in June when it hired the founders of Adept, a well-funded start up building AI agents that automate enterprise workflows, and struck a licensing deal with the company.
Amazon says the Perceive acquisition builds on its existing investments in edge technologies and custom silicon, designed to boost the performance and speed of its devices, and its efforts in large language models and multi-modal experiences.
The company’s Amazon Web Services cloud division has separately been developing its own custom silicon for cloud computing and AI workloads for many years, fuelled by its acquisition of Annapurna Labs a decade ago.
Amazon is making the Perceive acquisition via its Devices & Services division, which includes the Alexa voice assistant, Fire TV, and Echo smart speakers and displays. This division has been led by former Microsoft executive Panos Panay since last fall.
Perceive, led by co-CEOs Murali Dharan and Steve Teig, has employees in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Romania, and Estonia. Perceive’s Boise, Idaho, lab is expected to remain open after the deal closes, as well.
Amazon says the “vast majority” of Perceive’s employees are expected join the Devices & Services team after the deal closes, either connected to existing Amazon sites near their current locations, or working remotely.
Xperi incubated Perceive and separated it into a standalone subsidiary in 2018. The company announced in February of this year that it had retained an outside financial advisor to explore strategic alternatives for Perceive.
Competitors include a number of start-ups building technology for edge AI computing, including Axelera, a Netherlands-based company that raised $68 million in June, and Tel Aviv-based Halio, which raised $120 million in April.
