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Knowledge is the lifeblood of recent AI programs, however making it accessible for these complicated workloads is sort of a process. Immediately, Weka, a startup working to simplify this problem by making information repeatedly accessible on-demand with a singular AI-native providing, introduced it has raised a sequence E spherical of $140 million on the again of serious buyer curiosity. The funding, coming solely from current traders, has taken the corporate’s valuation to $1.6 billion – double what it was again in November 2022.
“Few might have predicted simply how rapidly the AI market would take off… However when [generative AI] exploded on the scene in December 2022, world demand for Weka’s information platform software program skyrocketed, with massive enterprise prospects and analysis organizations seeking to speed up their AI initiatives,” Jonathan Martin, president at Weka, instructed VentureBeat.
The corporate plans to make use of the contemporary capital throughout a number of areas, most notably to additional improve its platform — a software-based answer that eliminates information bottlenecks stemming from legacy architectures and creates a “dynamic pipeline” that feeds steady information to GPUs and AI workloads, thereby rising their effectivity and sustainability.
What does Weka carry to the desk?
Whilst enterprise leaders proceed to reiterate dedication to trendy workloads like generative AI, downstream groups are struggling to carry these initiatives to life owing to information silos and gaps stemming from legacy architectures. A typical generative AI pipeline revolves round a number of steps of copying datasets, which creates bottlenecks that decelerate the coaching processes and burn extra vitality.
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Based in 2013, Weka is fixing this drawback with what it calls a “dynamic information pipeline.” Primarily, the corporate’s software-based information platform leverages a singular zero-copy structure that eliminates time-intensive copying and accelerates every step of the AI pipeline to maintain GPUs consistently fed with information. This finally permits fashions to be skilled quicker and extra effectively — resulting in quicker time for insights and higher enterprise outcomes.
“By permitting organizations to simplify their IT stack for demanding AI and GPU-intensive pipelines, offering important financial savings and speeds, Weka prospects could make it to market faster than their rivals with a decrease spend. Our important efficiency enhancements additionally result in substantial financial savings within the energy required to run the GPU servers, making Weka essentially the most sustainable option to implement massive AI initiatives,” Martin defined.
On the coronary heart of the Weka Knowledge platform is a scale-out, shared parallel file system referred to as WekaFS. It interfaces straight with Peripheral Element Interconnect Specific (PCIe)-connected Non-Unstable Reminiscence Specific (NVMe) drives. It handles all kinds of knowledge varieties and sizes and IO profiles – and delivers 10x the efficiency of legacy community connected storage (NAS) programs and 3x the efficiency of native server storage.
“The Weka Knowledge Platform is designed for patrons with complicated information challenges and demanding information environments, together with massive enterprises, cloud service suppliers, analysis establishments, media firms, AI/ML firms and startups, IoT functions and monetary companies companies which are working performance-intensive next-generation workloads like AI, ML, HPC, quantum computing, 16K media and VFX,” Martin defined.
On the sustainability entrance, the president claims the platform’s skill to enhance GPU utilization with dynamic pipelines permits prospects to avoid wasting 260 tons of CO2e (Carbon dioxide equal) per petabyte of knowledge saved.
Vital development and the street forward
Whereas the gen AI wave triggered after the rise of ChatGPT almost two years in the past, Weka has been getting ready for this age since its inception. Consequently, moderately than evolving its product to fulfill the market wants (very like different gamers), the corporate is aggressively promoting to the purchasers coming to its doorstep.
“We had been already targeted on modernizing the enterprise information stack by architecting an answer that would assist the velocity, scale, simplicity and sustainability necessities of recent, performance-intensive workloads like AI/ML. We weren’t solely ready for the shift however forward of the curve,” Martin famous.
Presently, the corporate has greater than 300 prospects, together with 12 of the Fortune 50. Some notable AI firms utilizing Weka’s platform are Stability AI, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, The Heart for AI Security, and AI service suppliers/GPU clouds like Iris Vitality (IREN), Utilized Digital, NexGen Cloud and Yotta. On the monetary facet, the annual recurring income from the corporate’s software program subscription mannequin has doubled year-over-year and now exceeds $100 million. Martin initiatives it’s going to triple and even quadruple on this fiscal 12 months.
With this funding, Weka will increase its money reserves from earlier rounds and work in the direction of scaling the enterprise to fulfill the demand for AI infrastructure within the wake of the generative AI growth. This, Martin stated, contains investing in R&D, making enhancements to the information platform and investing in buyer success initiatives.
The corporate is anticipating to broaden its world workforce of 400 by no less than 25% by the top of this fiscal 12 months. Different notable gamers competing with Weka within the distributed file system area are VAST Knowledge, Nutanix, IBM, Dell Applied sciences, Qumulo and Pure Storage.
