Why would they buy something that is open source? They could acqui-hire but Hotz doesn't strike me as a person that would stay at a big corp like AMD for a significant amount of time.
To control it. If they are successful at making AMD cards competitive in AI, and I agree that what's missing it's only the software, that would create immense value for AMD. Too much to not have control over how it evolves. If they are successful it will not just be Hotz, he will hire other devs and an entire community will form around it.
Sure they could just fork it and try to continue development themselves, but the community and momentum might very well not go with them.
If/when tinygrad is successful then AMD acquiring control of the stewardship/direction-setting of the software that drives the incremental demand for their hardware is far more valuable than Hotz's talent itself.
