AI will force a transformation of tech infrastructure

livemint.com:

AI is about to make the cloud a lot heavier. Cloud services and private networks for years had to handle relatively limited amounts of data. Now that artificial intelligence and deep learning are driving vast quantities of photos, video, sound and natural language into the mix, however, data that was once counted in gigabytes and terabytes is measured in much larger units of petabytes and exabytes.

Information systems, including the cloud, must expand to store all of that data. Less obvious—and more interesting—is the need to access all of that information at much higher speed and, critically, lower operating cost. Some companies have already begun trying to develop the next generation of infrastructure.

CoreWeave, a cloud-computing provider that gives customers access to advanced AI chips from Nvidia, has focused attention on the emerging market. CoreWeave in May announced a $1.1 billion equity funding round that valued the seven-year-old startup at $19 billion, as well as $7.5 billion in debt financing from investors including Blackstone, Carlyle Group and BlackRock. Nvidia is also an investor.

CoreWeave in turn is a customer of a startup called VAST Data, which approaches cloud and private-network modernization from the software perspective. VAST has developed what it calls a faster, cheaper and more scalable operating system for all sorts of distributed networks. “Our vision was to build infrastructure for these new AI workloads," said Chief Executive Renen Hallak, who founded the company in Israel in 2016.