The News: Weka announced a new partnership with NexGen Cloud to provide data services for the cloud provider’s AI Supercloud and Hyperstack GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) offering. The partnership aims to create a hyper-efficient, scalable cloud for AI training and inference while addressing the associated sustainability challenges. Read more on Weka’s website.
Weka Partners with NexGen Cloud to Build a Sustainable AI Supercloud
Analyst Take: Weka announced a new partnership with UK-based cloud provider NexGen Cloud to provide the high-performance data infrastructure for NexGen’s Hyperstack GPUaaS offerings and its upcoming AI Supercloud. Last year, NexGen announced its plans to build the AI Supercloud—a $1 billion undertaking that will consist of over 20,000 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. NexGen’s mission with the AI Supercloud is providing affordable, on-demand access to state of the art GPUs to democratize AI innovation. Now, the company has announced that the AI Supercloud will leverage the Weka Data Platform.
The selection of Weka to power such an ambitious project certainly makes sense. An AI Supercloud with 20,000+ GPUs becomes a whole lot less super if the underlying data infrastructure leaves the GPUs starving for data. The Weka Data platform provides a highly scalable, high-performance solution that is optimized for efficient utilization of GPUs. In fact, Weka claims that its software can provide a 20x performance increase for training AI models. By utilizing the Weka Data Platform in its GPU cloud platform, NexGen can maximize the efficiency of its GPUs and enable customers to meet their AI goals.
Along with the technical aspects that make Weka an ideal fit for NexGen’s Supercloud, the partnership brings together two organizations that are well aligned on addressing the sustainability concerns associated with AI. Perhaps NexGen’s most impressive feat as a cloud service provider, even beyond its staggering amount of GPU power, is that it has built a cloud that is powered entirely by renewable energy. Weka, meanwhile, has been spearheading AI-related sustainability efforts with its own sustainable AI initiative.
The joint sustainability effort of the two organizations is quite notable, as it presents a cloud solution that can help organizations achieve their AI goals without sacrificing their sustainability initiatives. Over the past few years, AI and sustainability have both become core initiatives for organizations across seemingly all industries, yet the two areas are often at odds with each other. While AI applications pose significant value in optimizing processes and solving new challenges, the energy and resource requirements involved can be detrimental to sustainability efforts. As organizations look to balance AI innovation with responsible sustainability practices, it’s encouraging to see AI-focused companies such as Weka and NexGen provide solutions to do so.
As AI development continues to grow, so will the need for GPU-based cloud computing. By building an AI Supercloud, NexGen and Weka, can empower organizations to build new, innovative AI applications, by providing the powerful, scalable, and sustainable infrastructure required.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Image Credit: Weka
Author Information
Mitch comes to The Futurum Group through the acquisition of the Evaluator Group and is focused on the fast-paced and rapidly evolving areas of cloud computing and data storage. Mitch joined Evaluator Group in 2019 as a Research Associate covering numerous storage technologies and emerging IT trends.
With a passion for all things tech, Mitch brings deep technical knowledge and insight to The Futurum Group’s research by highlighting the latest in data center and information management solutions. Mitch’s coverage has spanned topics including primary and secondary storage, private and public clouds, networking fabrics, and more. With ever changing data technologies and rapidly emerging trends in today’s digital world, Mitch provides valuable insights into the IT landscape for enterprises, IT professionals, and technology enthusiasts alike.
