Weka, an AI-native data platform firm, has announced a partnership with UK-based sustainable infrastructure-as-a-service provider NexGen Cloud to contribute to the high-performance infrastructure foundation that will support its AI Supercloud and Hyperstack, an on-demand services offered via NexGen Cloud's GPUaaS platform.
NexGen Cloud operates one of the world's largest renewable energy-powered fleets of GPUs (graphics processing units). It recently unveiled plans to develop a new $1 billion AI Supercloud aimed at democratising AI innovations by rendering affordable, on-demand access to the world's most powerful GPUs.
In recent years, the surge in generative AI has led to a massive demand for GPUs which are essential for AI model training and inference. The increased demand often exceeds the available supply, making these advanced GPUs costly and difficult to manage. Consequently, many enterprises aiming to launch and further their enterprise AI initiatives face significant barriers. Furthermore, the demand for public cloud resources often surpasses available resources leaving companies bereft of viable AI initiative solutions. Firms like NexGen Cloud are now scaling their resources to cater to the surging demand for data infrastructure services that can support large-scale AI model training and inference workloads.
The S&P Global Market Intelligence reports suggest the limited supply and rising cost of GPUs will cause enterprises to look towards adopting GPU cloud infrastructure for their AI projects. John Abbott, Principal Research Analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, added, "Full-stack as-a-service business models for generative AI will gain traction. The ever-rising price of AI-enabled infrastructure is dampening enthusiasm for on-premises deployments favouring the cloud."
NexGen Cloud's AI Supercloud service, built on NVIDIA's latest state-of-the-art GPU hardware and supported by WEKA Data Platform, will provide an affordable, compute-intensive solution for businesses, research bodies, and governments at the forefront of cloud and AI innovations. Chris Starkey, co-founder and CEO at NexGen Cloud, said, "The WEKA Data Platform immediately stood out, not only for its exceptional performance and low latency but also for its ability to maximise the efficiency of our GPU cloud with a hardware-agnostic, innovative software solution."
The WEKA Data Platform will provide NexGen Cloud with the speed and scalability required to power its next-generation GPU environment involving AI model training and inference workloads. Jonathan Martin, president at WEKA, said, "We are excited to partner with NexGen Cloud to bring their ambitious AI Supercloud to market and help them to propel the future with democratised access to the world's most powerful GPUs."