2024 Marks a Year of Major Acquisitions for NVIDIA

NVIDIA, the world’s leading chipmaker company, completed the acquisition of Run:ai, an Israel-based AI infrastructure platform, on Monday. NVIDIA reportedly paid $700 million after overcoming several hurdles posed by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

Earlier in August, the US DOJ initiated an antitrust investigation on the acquisitions in lieu of the impact it can have on the competition. However, in October, the European Commission reviewed the deal and “unconditionally” approved it, citing that it may not have any concerning effects in the European Economic Area. 

However, the delays only benefited Run:ai, and its employees. Given NVIDIA’s stock price surge, founders and employees are set to be retained and will be paid $200 million in NVIDIA shares – reportedly double the initial amount. 

That said, Run:ai is also open-sourcing its software, which currently runs only on NVIDIA GPUs. “While our colours will change from pink to green, our commitment to our customers, partners, and the broader AI ecosystem remains unwavering,” the company stated. 

As for NVIDIA, the company is ending the year on a high note. The company achieved unprecedented success in 2024 and became the world’s most valuable company with a $3.5 trillion market cap, surpassing Apple. 

However, a less talked-about development is NVIDIA’s acquisitions throughout the year. Out of the 23 companies NVIDIA has acquired to date, six of them were completed in 2024 alone. 

Jensen Huang’s Big, Happy Family

Interestingly, Run:ai is the second Israeli company to be acquired by NVIDIA in 2024. Earlier in May, the company announced the acquisition of Deci for $300 million. Post-acquisition, the company was dissolved as an independent corporate entity. 

Deci’s deep learning acceleration platform helped developers improve their performance by up to 15 times without compromising accuracy. 

Soon after, NVIDIA acquired Shoreline.io in June, reportedly for $100 million. Shoreline, founded by a former AWS executive, developed a platform for automating processes to fix computer system incidents.

The company then acquired Brev.Dev, a San Francisco-based AI/ML development platform for training and deploying models on the cloud. In September, NVIDIA acquired OctoAI, a healthcare startup based in Seattle, US, reportedly for $250 million.

A few weeks ago, they completed the acquisition of VinBrain, another healthcare startup owned by the Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup. NVIDIA also set up an R&D centre in the country. 

From software development to healthcare, AI is catching up with every other sector, and NVIDIA wants to be at the forefront of it all. 

In a recent podcast episode, CEO Jensen Huang said that breakthroughs in AI will include “everything from quantum computing to quantum chemistry. “Every field of science is involved in the approaches that we’re talking about…Nothing will be left behind. We’re going to take everybody with us.” 

In addition to acquisitions, NVIDIA participated in several investment activities, the notable ones being OpenAI’s $6.6 billion funding round and Elon Musk’s xAI’s $6 billion Series C funding round. 

That said, NVIDIA has also had a fruitful year when it comes to partnerships in India. 

‘NVIDIA is AI in India’

In 2024, Huang demonstrated a significant focus on India. At the NVIDIA AI Summit in 2024 in Mumbai, Huang called NVIDIA “AI in India” and praised the country’s AI and cloud infrastructure. 

“By the end of this year, we will have nearly 20 times more compute here in India than just a little over a year ago,” he added. 

A few weeks ago, Yotta Data Services introduced Rudra, a program that provides startups and developers access to NVIDIA’s Hopper GPUs and their AI Enterprise software suite. Startups and independent software vendors (ISVs) enrolled in the NVIDIA Inception and Connect programs can receive cloud credits of up to $50,000 on Yotta’s Shakti Cloud.

Companies like Infosys, TCS, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro announced a collaboration with NVIDIA. For instance, TCS and Wipro use NVIDIA’s NIM Agent Blueprints for various sectors in their services. Infosys, on the other hand, incorporated NVIDIA’s AI Enterprise into their Topaz suite, which helps businesses integrate generative AI into their workflows. 

In October, NVIDIA also announced the Nemotron-4-Mini Hindi model, which Tech Mahindra was the first to implement in their Indus 2.0 Model. 

Huang also interacted with Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani and said that India is key to NVIDIA’s vision. At Jamnagar, Reliance is preparing to build a data centre capable of supporting 1GW of power, with the potential to expand multiple gigawatts at a single location. The facility is said to use NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell chips.

Earlier in July, NVIDIA also announced a collaboration with six Indian PC builders – The MVP, Ant PC, Vishal Peripherals, Hi-Tech Computer Genesys Labs, XRig, and EliteHubs, to launch ‘Made in India’ PCs equipped with RTX AI. 

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