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OctoAI, a Seattle AI startup that allowed customers to run a wide range of basis fashions whereas shielding them from the complexity of the underlying infrastructure, has been acquired by GPU big Nvidia.
Rumors have swirled a few potential acquisition since mid-September, when The Data broke the story that the 2 corporations had been in “superior talks” relating to an acquisition by Nvidia. Final week, OctoAI Founder and CEO Luis Ceze confirmed the deal in a LinkedIn publish.
“I’m very excited to share that I’m becoming a member of NVIDIA,” Ceze wrote. “Constructing OctoAI (now NVIDIA) has been a unbelievable journey going from pioneering analysis on ML compilers on the College of Washington, to driving Apache TVM adoption to constructing merchandise valued by prospects in a fast-paced business.”
There are many unanswered questions relating to this acquisition, together with what position Ceze can have at Nvidia. Ceze, who shared the title of VP AI techniques software program at Nvidia, says in his LinkedIn publish that he’s “excited to hitch NVIDIA and contribute to increasing efforts in ML compilers and cloud infrastructure for AI.”
It’s additionally unclear how a lot of the OctoAI workforce will make the transition over the Nvidia, or what Nvidia will do with the OctoAI software program, if something in any respect. It seems OctoAI prospects might want to begin searching for a brand new platform to host their AI workloads, in accordance with letters OctoAI is writing to prospects.
“We now have made the strategic choice to provoke the wind down of the business availability of our providers,” learn one letter an OctoAI prospects posted to LinkedIn. “As such, efficient October 31, 20224, we’re terminating your entry to all OctoAI providers and deactivating your account as permitted beneath the OctoAI providers Phrases of Use.”
Nvidia has not publicly introduced the deal, which The Data reported is value about $165 million. With debt and different components included, the deal may exceed $250 million, in accordance with a report by GeekWire.
OctoAI was co-founded in 2019 by Ceze and a number of other people from his analysis group on the College of Washington, together with Jared Roesch, Jason Knight, Thierry Moreau, and Tianqi Chen. The corporate, which initially was named OctoML, was based to commercialize Apache TVM, an open supply software program challenge led by Ceze that gives an abstraction layer between machine studying fashions and the {hardware} that it runs on.
OctoAI co-founder and CEO Luis Ceze is now VP of AI techniques software program at Nvidia
“Consider it as a center layer between frameworks and {hardware},” Ceze, who was a BigDATAwire Particular person to Look ahead to 2024, informed the publication again in 2021. “We provide a clear abstraction throughout all kinds of {hardware}.”
On the software program aspect, Apache TVM supported all the newest frameworks, together with TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, MXnet, Core ML, and ONNX. On the {hardware} aspect, Apache TVM supported a variety of processors, together with Intel and AMD CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, ARM CPUs, FPGAs, and even cell chips from Qualcomm. An on-prem model dubbed the Octomizer was additionally accessible.
OctoML developed a business model of Apache TVM that allowed prospects to carry their ML fashions to a wide range of {hardware}. Prospects may choose and select which processors to run ML coaching and inference workloads on, thereby serving to to maximise efficiency and decrease price.
Because the generative AI craze kicked in, OctoML pivoted its enterprise barely. Whereas it at all times supported laptop imaginative and prescient and pure language processing (NLP) workloads, the corporate sought to emphasise not solely the efficiency and price advantages of its platform, but in addition the flexibleness it brings to prospects and the aptitude to maneuver the place numerous elements of GenAI workloads run to keep away from lock-in.
OctoAI had raised about $132 million over 4 rounds. The most recent was a Collection C spherical led by Tiger International Administration in November 2021 that raised $85 million. The corporate was reportedly valued at about $900 million at the moment.
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