Nvidia acquires distributed AI inference platform OctoAI for approximately 165 million dollars.

Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) is considering acquiring the OctoAI startup for $165 million to strengthen its software and cloud computing services. According to the Information, which cites shareholders' messages, OctoAI sells software designed to enhance the efficiency of artificial intelligence models.

OctoAI raised $132 million from investors, including Tiger Global, and was valued at $900 million in 2021. The startup previously partnered with Nvidia in March to integrate optimized generative AI models for enterprise customers. OctoAI integrated NVIDIA NIM, which refers to inference microservices for accelerating the deployment of foundation models on any cloud or data center, into its generative AI platform to serve customer use cases, including language and image generation. The integration also enabled developers to experiment with inference-optimized models.

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang has voiced his conviction in the AI growth trajectory, expecting hyper-scale customers to produce "$5 in rental revenue for every $1 spent on Nvidia's infrastructure." Nvidia stock has risen significantly, up 163% in the last 12 months, as its Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) remain indispensable to Big Tech companies including Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.Com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Google parent Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) pursuing their AI ambitions.

Nvidia maintains significant hyper-scaler collaborations with Amazon and Oracle Corp (NYSE:ORCL), which BofA Securities analyst Justin Post expects will unlock significant cloud opportunities. At the time of writing, NVDA stock was up 1.02% to $116.77.