Netris raises $15M Series A from a16z to help AI neoclouds go live faster
Netris provides software that runs on network switches, and offers a platform that helps neocloud operators reduce the time it takes to go live.
The AI boom has encouraged everyone and their uncle to launch a data center business. But spinning up a data center isn’t easy.
Even if you solve the problem of securing the GPUs, network switches, and storage, you still have to get everything configured, running, and be able to cater to customers’ various needs. Getting a data center ready to provide cloud-computing services specifically for AI inference and training services can take months of work. And the longer you take to get to market, the higher the cost of having all those precious GPUs sitting idle.
Network automation startup Netris claims it can make that problem disappear for neoclouds. The company provides software that runs on network switches, and it also offers a platform that connects to switches to help neocloud operators reduce the time it takes to go live by automating setup, configuration, and operations. The platform also provides network abstraction, so hardware configurations can be changed as required, and it isolates servers and resources at the hardware layer so neoclouds can serve multiple customers (multi-tenancy).
If that sounds like a solution to an obvious problem, you’re not wrong. Until recently, data centers were largely the domain of large infrastructure operators like Equinix, NTT, Digital Realty, Oracle, Microsoft, AWS, or Google. Those companies pretty much solved network setup, configuration, and multi-tenancy for themselves by hiring ranks of engineers or building the automation themselves. Small neocloud businesses rarely have such resources at their disposal.
“As a GPU cluster operator, you need to make configuration changes to every link, every day. At traditional data centers, they were using something called SDN [software-defined networking] to do this, but SDN is falling short, because it’s a software technology,” Netris’ CEO Alex Saroyan told TechCrunch. “For AI, software is not okay, because the amount of traffic is so high, everything must be hardware accelerated. So you need something like SDN, but completely hardware accelerated. This is what we do, and this is what we’ve been doing for eight years.”
Saroyan said Netris’ platform is vendor-agnostic, compatible with networking equipment and standards used at data centers, both for Nvidia and AMD’s servers.
The startup’s promise has found many believers, one of which is Nvidia. Two years ago, the chipmaking giant was so impressed by a demo of Netris’ technology that it recommended the company to several customers. Today, Netris is live at more than 35 GPU clusters around the world (about a million GPUs total), operated by the likes of Lightning AI, Foxconn, Visionbay, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, TensorWave, Telus, and others.
To build on that momentum, Netris has now raised $15 million in a Series A round from Andreessen Horowitz, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Notably, there’s no AI at work here. Saroyan said the company only uses algorithms it had developed previously for running and configuring automation and operations.
“We started way before AI. We understood the challenge early on, and we started developing this algorithm early on. AI is not deterministic, right? Sometimes it likes to do things on its own. It’s good for creative work, but for changing many thousands of switch configurations, you don’t need to be creative. You need to be very persistent and repeatable.”
a16z partner Guido Appenzeller is joining the company’s board. Looking forward, Netris aims to use the funding to hire more engineers and sales staff, add support for more hardware vendors, and implement more functionality in its algorithm.
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Ram is a financial and tech reporter and editor. He covered North American and European M&A, equity, regulatory news and debt markets at Reuters and Acuris Global, and has also written about travel, tourism, entertainment and books.
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Pontos-chave
- A Netris oferece uma solução que pode democratizar o acesso a serviços de data center para empresas menores no Brasil.
- A aceitação da tecnologia da Netris por empresas como a Nvidia indica um reconhecimento do potencial da startup no mercado de IA.
- A automação de redes e a abstração de hardware podem acelerar a transformação digital de empresas brasileiras, permitindo uma entrada mais rápida no mercado de nuvem.
Análise editorial
A captação de US$ 15 milhões pela Netris representa um avanço significativo no ecossistema de tecnologia no Brasil, especialmente no que diz respeito à infraestrutura de data centers. Com a crescente demanda por soluções de inteligência artificial, a agilidade na implementação de serviços em nuvem se torna um fator crítico para empresas que desejam competir nesse mercado. A proposta da Netris de automatizar a configuração e operação de redes pode ser um divisor de águas, permitindo que empresas menores, que não possuem os mesmos recursos que gigantes como AWS ou Google, possam entrar no jogo com mais rapidez e eficiência.
Além disso, a abordagem da Netris, que combina automação de hardware com abstração de rede, pode inspirar outras startups brasileiras a explorar soluções inovadoras para problemas complexos de infraestrutura. O Brasil, com seu potencial em tecnologia e inovação, pode se beneficiar de tecnologias que acelerem o desenvolvimento de data centers, especialmente em um momento em que a transformação digital é uma prioridade para muitas empresas.
É importante observar como a Netris irá se posicionar frente à concorrência e como sua tecnologia será adotada por empresas locais. A aceitação de sua plataforma por um nome de peso como a Nvidia é um indicativo de que a solução tem potencial, mas a execução e a adaptação ao mercado brasileiro serão cruciais. O que se segue será a capacidade da Netris de demonstrar resultados concretos e de formar parcerias estratégicas que possam ampliar sua presença no Brasil e na América Latina.
Por fim, a evolução do setor de data centers no Brasil está intimamente ligada à evolução das necessidades de computação em nuvem e inteligência artificial. A Netris pode ser um player importante nesse cenário, mas o sucesso dependerá de sua habilidade em se adaptar às especificidades do mercado local e de como conseguirá integrar-se ao ecossistema tecnológico já estabelecido no país.
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Fonte original:
TechCrunch AISobre este artigo
Este artigo foi curado e publicado pelo AIDaily como parte da nossa cobertura editorial sobre desenvolvimentos em inteligência artificial. O conteúdo é baseado na fonte original citada abaixo, enriquecido com contexto e análise editorial. Ferramentas automatizadas podem auxiliar tradução e estruturação inicial, mas a decisão de publicar, a revisão factual e o enquadramento de contexto seguem responsabilidade editorial.
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