Nvidia has announced plans to acquire Run:ai, an Israeli startup specializing in Kubernetes-based software that optimizes AI applications and workloads on GPUs. The acquisition, valued at approximately $700 million, is part of Nvidia’s strategic expansion and dominance in the AI stack.
Run:ai, founded in 2018 by Omri Geller and Ronen Dar, specializes in AI infrastructure orchestration and management. The company provides a platform that allows developers and operations teams to manage and optimize their AI hardware infrastructure, ensuring efficient utilization of computing resources.
The acquisition comes as Nvidia has been on a buying spree, acquiring various companies to strengthen its position in the high-end chip market, where it already controls an estimated 80%. Run:ai has been a close collaborator with Nvidia since 2020, and the acquisition is expected to help Nvidia’s customers make more efficient use of their AI computing resources.
“Run:ai’s expertise in AI infrastructure optimization complements our efforts to provide a comprehensive GPU ecosystem for AI solutions,” said Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO. “As AI models become increasingly complex and workloads become more distributed, Run:ai’s capabilities will be invaluable in enabling our customers to maximize the performance and efficiency of their AI deployments.”
For the immediate future, Nvidia plans to continue offering Run:ai’s products under the same business model. However, the long-term goal is to integrate Run:ai’s capabilities into Nvidia’s DGX Cloud, an AI platform co-engineered with leading cloud providers for enterprise developers. This move is expected to benefit Nvidia DGX and DGX Cloud customers, particularly for large language model deployments.
The acquisition of Run:ai is Nvidia’s most significant in Israel since purchasing Mellanox for $6.9 billion in March 2019. Nvidia has a substantial presence in Israel, employing around 3,200 people, and considers Israel its second-most significant market. Run:ai has raised a total of $118 million in funding to date, with its most recent Series C round in March 2022 bringing in $75 million.
Nvidia’s market capitalization is around $2.1 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. The company’s stock has seen significant growth, surging by 204% in the past 12 months, partly due to the ongoing AI boom.
As AI continues to evolve and transform various industries, Nvidia’s acquisition of Run:ai underscores the company’s ambition to provide a comprehensive GPU ecosystem for AI solutions and to adapt to increasingly complex AI models and applications with widely distributed workloads and infrastructures.