Storj Announces Acquisition of Valdi to Address GPU Shortage in Growing AI Market
LOS ANGELES, July 10, 2024 -- Storj has announced its acquisition of Valdi, a leader in on-demand high performance cloud computing (GPUs) widely used for AI training and inference in data-intensive industries like technology, research and life-sciences.
Valdi is addressing the massive shortage of GPUs driven by growth of the AI market by making them available instantly in mass scale at very competitive prices. Storj is seizing the opportunity to accelerate innovation at-scale with integrated cloud storage and GPU solutions, which is a big step toward developing a full stack distributed cloud solution.
Just as Storj disrupted the storage industry by enabling customers to use underutilized storage capacity in data centers in 100+ countries worldwide, Valdi is shaking up the GPU industry, enabling customers to use available GPU compute cycles in data centers worldwide. The combination is ideal because most AI workloads require significant GPU compute, storage and movement of large data sets.
"Today's enterprises demand new high-performance cloud solutions to innovate affordably and sustainably," commented Storj Chief Revenue Officer Colby Winegar. "Valdi's global network of data centers with high performance cloud compute is a natural extension of Storj's distributed cloud and particularly exciting as our joint storage and GPU offering is optimized for Generative AI workloads."
In the rapidly evolving field of generative AI, the capacity to scale efficiently throughout different stages of model development and deployment is critical. Valdi's global compute infrastructure enables developers and enterprises to build and commercialize their own generative AI applications easily.
Valdi's high-performance GPUs and Storj's S3 compatible distributed cloud object storage are infinitely and rapidly scalable, and available almost anywhere in the world. With elastic capacity, Storj eliminates supply chain, manufacturing and resource-intensive maintenance challenges, while delivering speed, scalability, security, reliability and sustainability by design. Valdi also operates via a distributed architecture, allowing organizations to innovate fast and affordably in AI/ML.
"Validi's global cloud compute platform enables it to surpass traditional approaches to GPU provisioning, especially when facing unprecedented demand," said Valdi CEO Nikhil Jain. "Our customers also have substantial storage needs for their AI workloads, so uniting our organizations delivers benefits to customers while empowering us to grow faster."
Institutions including CalTech and USC/ISI utilize Valdi's cloud compute platform for their AI workloads. Storj and Valdi prove to the enterprise that the highest standards of performance can be delivered and scaled at a fraction of the financial and carbon expenses of traditional approaches, thanks to distributed architectures.
Valdi makes it easy to spin-up powerful GPU clusters in flexible configurations in only a few seconds with no contracts and at very reasonable pricing. The Valdi network features over 16,000 GPUs globally.
"Storj was created to build a new cloud for a new era of computing," said Storj CEO Ben Golub. "About 20 years ago AWS began with S3 object storage followed by EC2 CPU-based computing and other services. Today, Storj builds on our strong foundation of distributed cloud object storage. Acquiring Valdi expands the value of our distributed solutions for the enterprise by enabling a full stack cloud offering for our wide range of global customers."
Valdi and Storj also share a passion for digital sustainability and responsible innovation. They co-founded the non-profit Digital Sustainability Alliance (DSA) together with Ad Signal, to advocate for technology that advances environmental stewardship.
About Storj
Storj is redefining the cloud to advance the future of data—sustainably and economically. Storj leverages the vast global supply of underutilized resources to deliver services with better security, durability and performance. Experience up to 90% lower costs and carbon reduction with Storj.
Source: Storj
