Run:AI, an Israeli startup developing orchestration and virtualization software for artificial intelligence, announced a $30 million Series B funding round. The investment was led by Insight partners, with existing investors TLV Partners and S Capital also participating in the round. The company has raised $43 million to date.
Reduce average AI training by 3000%
Over the last few years, many organizations have started implementing AI during production, however, in order to get the AI network at its optimal capacity, it needs to be trained through long, and expensive processes. Run:AI looks at training resources a little differently.
The Israeli AI company, which was founded in 2018 by CEO Omri Geller and Dr. Ronen Dar, has built an orchestration and virtualization software layer tailored to the unique needs of AI workloads running on GPUs and similar chipsets. The platform deploys OS-level virtualization software for workloads running on GPUs.
In addition, Run:AI developed a Kubernetes-based container platform for AI clouds that efficiently pools and shares GPUs by automatically assigning the necessary amount of compute power – from fractions of GPUs, to multiple GPUs, to multiple nodes of GPUs – so that researchers can dynamically receive as much compute power as they need.
“This means that we are the first to run multiple containers in parallel on the same GPU, without them interfering one with another. As a result, it’s possible to significantly increase the allocation of resources efficiently,” explains Run:AI CEO Omri Geller in a conversation with Geektime.
According to Geller, the platform doubles, even triples existing resource allocation efficiency. Add to the fact that as part of an experiment at the London Medical Imaging & Artificial Intelligence Center, Run:AI’s system was able reduce average AI training time by 3,000%.
COVID didn’t stop, but accelerated
Geller tells Geektime that 2020 was rather positive for the company, including tripling its workforce, and doubling new customers quarter over quarter. “One of the more interesting things is that we see AI strategy being prioritized by governments as well. Countries are investing a lot of money in AI to create a competitive advantage.” said Geller, who mentioned both Israel and the U.S. as countries that have announced massive investments in the AI sector.