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.
Arva Rangwala covers AI news, AI tools, guides and prompts for OpenAIMaster — what is new, what is worth using, and how to put AI to work.