AMD boosts AI hardware with MEXT acquisition and Ryzen AI Halo platform

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced the acquisition of MEXT, a startup offering software that enables cheap flash memory to act like high‑speed RAM for AI workloads. The technology will be integrated into AMD's MI300 and upcoming MI355X AI accelerators, helping data centres overcome the "memory wall" and reducing cloud costs. The deal helped AMD’s market value briefly top $900 billion and analysts raised price targets to $560‑$575.

On the same day AMD launched the Ryzen AI Halo developer platform, a €3,700 system that runs AI models of up to 200 billion parameters locally. Powered by a 16‑core Zen‑5 CPU, 128 GB LPDDR5X‑8000 RAM and 126 TOPS of compute, the platform outperforms Nvidia’s DGX Spark in specific benchmarks and is priced lower. Shares rose about 8% to a record high. The moves position AMD as a stronger competitor to Nvidia in the AI hardware market and come as companies adapt to the new EU AI Act regulations.