Nebius to buy AI chip optimization startup, deal worth $615 million, Bloomberg writes / Photo: Nebius.com
Arkady Volozh's Nebius Group cloud computing provider Nebius Group will buy Eigen AI, a startup focused on improving the efficiency of chips for artificial intelligence tasks, the company said. The amount of the deal is about $615 million, Bloomberg writes. The acquisition will be made partly through shares, partly in cash.
Eigen is a California-based startup with 20 employees. It was founded by two alumni of MIT's leading AI lab, Ryan Hanrui Wang and Wei-Chen Wang. The company focuses on optimizing the performance of a number of key open source AI models - from OpenAI, Alibaba, Meta and Nvidia, Bloomberg reports.
Eigen's technology allows a single Nvidia chip to process more data when running AI models - that is, it increases its efficiency when running them, explained Nebius co-founder and director of business development Roman Chernin. This will help the company offer better and cheaper services to customers.
"Right now, it [competition to maximize AI computing efficiency] is kind of an Olympic sport in the market," Chernin added, "who can extract more tokens for the same price. The Eigen team is "like Olympic runners in this discipline," he said, which significantly improves Nebius' inferencing business (running and using AI models to process user requests).
The deal was the second for Nebius Group in the last three months after the purchase of software developer Tavily in February, Bloomberg recalls. According to Chernin, the company is considering other acquisition opportunities.
Nebius shares were up 1.2% at the May 1 premarket. Since the beginning of the year, they are up 65%.
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