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Nvidia Eyes Run:ai Acquisition in AI Infrastructure Power Play

Nvidia is in advanced negotiations to acquire AI infrastructure orchestration and management platform Run:ai, Calcalist has learned. The deal is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and could go as high as $1 billion. The companies did not respond to Calcalist's request for comment.

Run:ai raised $75 million in a Series C round in March 2022 led by Tiger Global Management and Insight Partners, which also led the previous Series B round. Existing investors, TLV Partners, and S Capital VC joined the round, bringing the total funding to date to $118 million.

Run:ai was founded in 2018 by Omri Geller (CEO) and Drs. Ronen Darr (CTO). The two met while studying at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Darr was previously a researcher at Bell Labs an algorithm engineer at Enobit Technologies, and later at Apple after it acquired the company. Till the invention of Run:ai, Geller worked in the Technology Unit of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Run:ai has developed an orchestration and virtualization software layer to suit the unique needs of AI projects running on GPUs and similar chipsets. Run: AI’s Kubernetes-based container platform for AI, clouds pools and efficiently distributes GPUs by providing the required computing power from GPU fractions to multiple GPUs, and multiple GPU nodes.

“We are the leading company in our sector and it is important to us to establish ourselves as a big company that is building the AI operating system. We have been selling our product for only a year and a half and we already have millions of dollars in revenue,” Geller told Calcalist two years ago.

If the deal is completed, it will be Nvidia’s first acquisition in Israel since its $6.9 billion purchase of Mellanox in March 2019. NVIDIA, which opens its annual GTC conference on Monday, has risen to become the world's third-most valuable company in the past year because investors can't find a semiconductor maker whose chips have the artificial proliferation of popular intelligence tools such as the capabilities of ChatGPT.

An AI-driven jaw-dropping surge in NVIDIA shares has boosted the company’s valuation from $1 billion to more than $2 billion in just nine months, surpassing Amazon.com, Google parent Alphabet and Saudi Aramco.

Nvidia’s market cap is now around $2.2 billion. The relentless rise in shares of Nvidia, which controls 80% of the high-end AI chip market, has contributed greatly to Wall Street's rally this year while giving the company a 5% override in the benchmark S&P 500 index.

Conclusion: If Nvidia's purchase of Run: ai comes to fruition, it could signal a new era in AI design, marked by improved productivity, scalability, and innovation as organizations continue to harness the power of AI used to drive digital transformation and the integration of these by AI the two tech titans play a key role in shaping the future of technology.