Datacenter networking startup UpscaleAI has secured an additional $190 million in funding, SiliconANGLE reported on June 22.
The investment was led by Premji Invest. Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Seligman Ventures and Temasek also participated.
UpscaleAI is developing scale-up and scale-out switches optimized for AI workloads. A scale-up switch is a device that sends and receives data between servers in the same rack, while a scale-out switch handles traffic between racks.
When an AI model processes a prompt, computations must be carried out in sequence. If GPUs exchange data more slowly than expected, all subsequent computations are delayed. UpscaleAI is focusing on addressing this problem with its in-house chip, Skyhammer.
Skyhammer keeps data arrival times consistent and prevents computations from being delayed by unexpected lag, the company explained.
UpscaleAI CEO Varun Ka (바룬 카) said, "AI infrastructure is being redefined at the cluster scale, and networking is one of the most important bottlenecks," adding that it is "building a high-performance, open-standard AI fabric for large-scale synchronized workloads."
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr