The US gaming and graphics behemoth Nvidia revealed on Wednesday that it is purchasing Israeli startup Run:ai, which makes software for businesses and developers to handle complicated AI workloads and processing resources on one platform.
The acquisition’s financial details were not made public, however reports place its estimated value between $600 million and $700 million. According to estimates, this transaction is Nvidia’s largest purchase in Israel since the US chipmaker paid $6.9 billion to acquire Mellanox Technologies Ltd. in 2020.
The personnel from Run:ai will be joining Nvidia’s expanding operations in Israel, where the chipmaker employs over 4,000 people across seven research and development sites, including Yokne’am, the headquarters of Mellanox, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ra’anana, and Beersheba in the south.
The CEO and CTO of the Tel Aviv-based startup, Omri Geller and Ronen Dar, met while pursuing postgraduate studies at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering under Professor Meir Feder. Their goal was to create a foundational layer that could support any AI workload. The company was launched in 2018.
Since then, Run:ai has created a single, cohesive platform to streamline workload management and AI infrastructure, enabling businesses and organizations to manage their machine learning and AI projects while meeting the expanding requirements of massive language models and generative AI.
The business has secured $118 million in funding thus far from investors such as TLV Partners, S Capital VC, Tiger Global Management, and Insight Partners. Geller commented on the agreement, stating that Run:ai and Nvidia have already worked together since 2020.
In a blog post, Nvidia’s vice president of DGX Cloud, Alexis Bjorlin, stated that the company is buying the firm to assist “customers make more efficient use of their AI computing resources.”
Bjorlin said, “Workloads are distributed across cloud, edge, and on-premises data center infrastructure, and customer AI deployments are becoming increasingly complex.” “Run:ai enables enterprise customers to manage and optimize their computer infrastructure, whether on premises, in the cloud or in hybrid environments.
According to Bjorlin, Nvidia will keep using the same commercial strategy to promote Run:ai’s products and will contribute to the startup’s product roadmap.
Since commencing its activities in Israel in 2016 and establishing an AI research center two years later, Nvidia is one of the multinational technology behemoths that has increased its footprint in the nation. Already, Nvidia’s R&D operations in Israel are the company’s biggest outside of the United States.
In addition to its research and development activities, Nvidia also manages the Nvidia Developer Program, which gives developers free access to Nvidia’s product line, and the Nvidia Inception Program for firms, an accelerator that works with hundreds of early-stage businesses, including 1,000 Israeli firms.
For an undisclosed fee, Nvidia acquired the Israeli business Excelero in March 2022. Excelero provides block storage and enterprise data storage solutions.
Nvidia said in May of last year that it was creating Israel-1, the country’s most potent generative AI cloud supercomputer, based on a recently created high-performance Ethernet platform that was developed domestically.
