OctoAI
2019 - 2024, 6 years old
A managed platform for running and optimizing open-source AI models cheaply across different hardware, built by the creators of Apache TVM.
OctoAI started in 2019 as OctoML, founded by the University of Washington researchers behind the Apache TVM compiler, with a pitch aimed at the unglamorous middle of the AI stack: run any model on any hardware, faster and cheaper. It raised about 132 million dollars, reaching a roughly 900 million dollar valuation at its 2021 Series C led by Tiger Global, and rebranded to OctoAI as it leaned into generative-model inference. In September 2024 Nvidia acquired the company, and the OctoAI cloud service shut down on October 31, 2024, customer accounts deactivated, with no successor product. It was a strong team and a real technology, absorbed by the chipmaker whose hardware it had been built to optimize. The model-serving layer turned out to be a feature of the silicon, not a company.
- Founded
- 2019-01
- Shut down
- 2024-10-31
- Funding raised
- $132M
- Years alive
- 6
- Founders
- Luis Ceze, Tianqi Chen, Jared Roesch
Sources
Related departures
New entries and essays by email.
Occasional dispatches when something dies. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.