APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE, DATA STORAGE
Businesswire | April 21, 2023
CoreWeave a specialized cloud provider built for large-scale GPU-accelerated workloads, today announced it has secured $221 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Magnetar Capital (“Magnetar”), a leading alternative asset manager, with contributions from NVIDIA, and rounded out by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.
The latest funding will be used to further expand CoreWeave’s specialized cloud infrastructure for compute-intensive workloads — including artificial intelligence and machine learning, visual effects and rendering, batch processing and pixel streaming — to meet the explosive demand for generative AI technology. This strategic focus has allowed CoreWeave to offer purpose-built, customized solutions that can outperform larger, more generalized cloud providers. The new capital will also support U.S.-based data center expansion with the opening of two new centers this year, bringing CoreWeave’s total North American-based data centers to five.
“CoreWeave is uniquely positioned to power the seemingly overnight boom in AI technology with our ability to innovate and iterate more quickly than the hyperscalers,” said CoreWeave CEO and co-founder Michael Intrator. “Magnetar’s strong, continued partnership and financial support as lead investor in this Series B round ensures we can maintain that momentum without skipping a beat. Additionally, we’re thrilled to expand our collaboration with the team at NVIDIA. NVIDIA consistently pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in the field of technology, and their vision and guidance will be invaluable as we continue to scale our organization.”
NVIDIA recently released the highest-performance data center GPU, the NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core, along with the NVIDIA HGX H100 platform. CoreWeave announced at the NVIDIA GTC conference in March that its HGX H100 clusters are live and currently serving clients such as Anlatan, the creators of NovelAI. In addition to HGX H100, CoreWeave offers more than 11 NVIDIA GPU SKUs, interconnected with the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand in-network computing platform, which are available to clients on demand and via reserved instance contracts.
Investor Perspectives on $221M Series B Round
“AI has reached an inflection point, and we’re seeing accelerated interest in AI computing infrastructure from startups to major enterprises,” said Manuvir Das, Vice President of Enterprise Computing at NVIDIA. “CoreWeave’s strategy of delivering accelerated computing infrastructure for generative AI, large language models and AI factories will help bring the highest-performance, most energy-efficient computing platform to every industry.”
“With the seemingly limitless boundaries of AI applications and technologies, the demand for compute-intensive hardware and infrastructure is higher than it's ever been,” said Ernie Rogers, Magnetar’s chief operating officer. “CoreWeave’s innovative, agile and customizable product offering is well-situated to service this demand and the company is consequently experiencing explosive growth to support it. We are proud to collaborate with NVIDIA in supporting CoreWeave’s next phase of growth as it continues to bolster its already strong positioning in the marketplace.”
About CoreWeave
Founded in 2017, CoreWeave is a specialized cloud provider, delivering a massive scale of GPU compute resources on top of the industry’s fastest and most flexible infrastructure. CoreWeave builds cloud solutions for compute-intensive use cases — VFX and rendering, machine learning and AI, batch processing and pixel streaming — that are up to 35 times faster and 80% less expensive than the large, generalized public clouds.
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HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE
euNetworks | March 14, 2023
euNetworks Group Limited, a company that provides bandwidth infrastructure in Western Europe, recently announced its acquisition of the dark fiber business branch of a utility company called ‘the Business Branch’ in Belgium.The Business Branch, constructed in the late 1990s, is a duct-based network with 1,660 km of fiber dispersed throughout unique Brussels routes and long haul routes across Belgium. It has access to additional high-bandwidth sites and is close to 13 data centers.
Customers from national and regional ISPs to content, cloud providers, mobile network operators, and hyperscalers will receive dark fiber and lit services through euNetworks' long-haul infrastructure. The recent upgrade underwent increased expansion capacity and ability to pull the new, higher-count cable, satisfying euNetworks' client bandwidth growth needs.
Paula Cogan, Chief Executive Officer of euNetworks remarked, “euNetworks continues to distinguish itself in the digital infrastructure ecosystem, delivering critical internet infrastructure to customers through an asset-rich business focused on developing and deepening its fibre networks in Europe.” She added, “This acquisition will strengthen euNetworks’ leadership in European infrastructure by enabling us to expand across Belgium while maintaining our focus on delivering unique and scalable network routes to our customers between key data centres. It also presents compelling investment opportunities as we look into adjacent geographies with our customers to give them an end-to-end experience and as we focus on the ongoing densification of the high-demand bandwidth region of FLAP (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris).”
(Source – Business Wire)
The inclusion of the Business Branch complements euNetworks' current approach. euNetworks is committed to providing high-bandwidth fiber connectivity within and between European cities, constantly improving its infrastructure. These improvements include creating new routes, adding new paths, and expanding into key hyperscale data center sites, network aggregation points and data center clusters. These investments drive the capacity needs of euNetworks' customers and fuel the company's expansion.
About euNetworks
euNetworks was started in 2002 and has been serving wholesale, finance, content, media, mobile, data centers, and enterprise customers with critical bandwidth infrastructure services. The company owns and runs 17 fiber-based metropolitan networks and a high-capacity intercity backbone that connect 53 cities in 17 European countries. euNetworks offers a range of metropolitan and long-haul services, including Dark Fiber, Ethernet and Wavelengths and is a leading cloud connectivity provider.
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WINDOWS SERVER MANAGEMENT, IT SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
prnewswire | April 06, 2023
Introduced in April 2022, the IBM z16 multi frame has helped transform industries with real-time AI inferencing at scale and quantum-safe cryptography. IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4, launched in September 2022, features capabilities that can reduce both energy consumption and data center floor space while delivering the scale, performance and security that clients need. The new single frame and rack mount configurations expand client infrastructure choices and help bring these benefits to data center environments where space, sustainability and standardization are paramount.
"IBM remains at the forefront of innovation to help clients weather storms generated by an ever-changing market," said Ross Mauri, General Manager, IBM zSystems and LinuxONE. "We're protecting clients' investments in existing infrastructure while helping them to innovate with AI and quantum-safe technologies. These new options let companies of all sizes seamlessly co-locate IBM z16 and LinuxONE Rockhopper 4 with distributed infrastructure, bringing exciting capabilities to those environments."
Designed for today's changing IT environment to enable new use cases
Organizations in every industry are balancing an increasing number of challenges to deliver integrated digital services. According to a recent IBM Transformation Index report, among those surveyed, security, managing complex environments and regulatory compliance were cited as challenges to integrating workloads in a hybrid cloud. These challenges can be compounded by more stringent environmental regulations and continuously rising costs.
"We have seen immense value from utilizing the IBM z16 platform in a hybrid cloud environment," said Bo Gebbie, president, Evolving Solutions. "Leveraging these very secure systems for high volume transactional workloads, combined with cloud-native technologies, has enabled greater levels of agility and cost optimization for both our clients' businesses and our own."
The new IBM z16 and LinuxONE 4 offerings are built for the modern data center to help optimize flexibility and sustainability, with capabilities for partition-level power monitoring and additional environmental metrics. For example, consolidating Linux workloads on an IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 4 instead of running them on compared x86 servers with similar conditions and location can reduce energy consumption by 75 percent and space by 67 percent.1 These new configurations are engineered to deliver the same hallmark IBM security and transaction processing at scale.
Designed and tested to the same internal qualifications as the IBM z16 high availability portfolio2, the new rack-optimized footprint is designed for use with client-owned, standard 19-inch racks and power distribution units. This new footprint opens opportunities to include systems in distributed environments with other servers, storage, SAN and switches in one rack, designed to optimize both co-location and latency for complex computing, such as training AI models.
About IBM
IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,800 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service.
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