The editor of Downcodes learned that Red Hat recently announced the acquisition of AI optimization start-up Neural Magic. The details of the transaction have not been made public. Founded in 2018, Neural Magic is committed to optimizing AI models so that they can run at speeds close to dedicated AI chips on ordinary processors. This acquisition highlights Red Hat’s strategic layout in the open source and AI fields, as well as recognition of Neural Magic’s achievements in the vLLM project. Neural Magic's open source tools and free platform make it stand out in the highly competitive AI optimization market. This acquisition will further promote Red Hat's expansion in the AI field.
Neural Magic was founded in 2018 by MIT research scientist Alex Matveev and professor Nir Shavit. The company's software is designed to optimize artificial intelligence models so that they can run on ordinary processors and GPUs at speeds approaching specialized AI chips such as TPUs. By running AI models on common processors, Neural Magic's software is able to take advantage of larger memory, thereby improving performance.
In the field of AI optimization, many large technology companies and start-ups are actively competing, such as AMD and NeuReality, Deci, CoCoPie, etc. But what makes Neural Magic special is that it offers a free platform and a range of open source tools, which makes it unique in the market.
Neural Magic has raised $50 million in venture capital to date from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, Amdocs, Comcast Ventures, Pillar VC and Ridgeline Ventures. Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks said that Neural Magic's results on the vLLM project have aroused great interest in Red Hat. With Neural Magic, Red Hat will be able to offer an "enterprise-grade" vLLM-based stack that helps customers optimize and deploy models while ensuring full control of infrastructure and security.
Red Hat has already participated in the vLLM project, using the project to drive the operation of its products such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI and Red Hat OpenShift AI. Hicks noted that through Red Hat's collaboration with Neural Magic, infrastructure partners are better able to scale AI across platforms, while integration service provider partners gain greater inference capabilities and performance to better match their products. ground integration.
"AI workloads need to run in the hybrid cloud where customer data resides, requiring flexible, standardized and open platforms and tools that enable organizations to choose the environment that best meets their unique operational and data needs," Hicks said in the statement. Resources and architecture.” This acquisition further promotes Red Hat’s dual development in the open source and AI fields.
The news of Red Hat's acquisition of Neural Magic comes as the company makes a series of AI-related announcements at the KubeCon annual computing conference in Salt Lake City. Red Hat also unveiled Climatik tools developed in partnership with Intel, Bloomberg and IBM to optimize data center energy efficiency, and released new versions of its OpenShift AI and Device Edge development platforms.
Official blog: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-acquire-neural-magic?intcmp=7015Y0000048mWDQAY
Red Hat’s acquisition of Neural Magic heralds new development opportunities in the field of open source AI. Red Hat will leverage Neural Magic's technical advantages to further expand its share of the enterprise-level AI market and provide customers with more powerful and flexible AI solutions. This acquisition also provides a reference for other AI start-ups. Open source and innovation will continue to be the key driving forces for the development of the AI industry.