GPU cloud start-up Hyperbolic raised $30 million in a Series A1 round led by Walden Catalyst, co-founded by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst and Vista Equity Partners also took part. Its Forge product joins mismatched GPU systems into one managed pool behind a single dashboard. The company is also building Global Compute Grid, a market for buying and reselling spare GPU capacity, and says it has more than 250,000 users.

What it means: Until recently, the main problem in AI computing was finding available graphics cards at all. Now a second problem is appearing: many companies have bought or leased systems they do not fully use, often from different manufacturers and generations, and find it hard to manage them as one. Hyperbolic targets both, with a tool to unify clusters and a market where idle capacity can be sold to others, somewhat like the move of energy towards markets with dynamic pricing. If such markets mature, smaller companies could access GPUs for a few hours or days at a lower price instead of committing to long contracts. There are open questions, though: where the machines physically sit, who can access the data they process and what availability guarantees are given. For Greek start-ups and research groups that train or adapt models, such services could cut the cost of experimenting. When they process personal data of Europeans, however, they need to check location and processing terms so the GDPR is respected.

Read the original on Hyperbolic

Related service: Custom software

Related stories