Luis Ceze, a professor, turned his lab's project into a startup. Nvidia bought it, made him Vice President, and he kept teaching

Nvidia acquired a Seattle-based software startup with over 100 employees, ‘OctoAI,’ in 2024. The company was founded in 2019 based on research developed at the University of Washington. Nvidia reportedly offered $165 million to buy out OctoAI. OctoAI's LinkedIn page writes, "OctoAI was acquired by NVIDIA Corporation in September 2024 and was dissolved as an independent corporate entity."

Nvidia’s OctoAI acquisition was part of an M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) deal, according to GeekWire. OctoAI CEO and co-founder Luis Ceze has joined Nvidia as VP. His role at Nvidia is to look after AI systems software. As of today, OctoAI's page displays that the company is now part of Nvidia.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join NVIDIA and contribute to expanding efforts in ML compilers and cloud infrastructure for AI,” Ceze wrote on LinkedIn. “I can’t imagine a better place to build AI systems in the world right now than NVIDIA.”

How was OctoAI born?

OctoAI’s founders helped create Apache TVM, an open-source “deep learning compiler stack” that started as a research project at the University of Washington’s computer science school. Luis Ceze worked with other board members: McIlwain, Mike Dauber of Amplify Partners, Carlos Guestrin of Stanford University, and Lip-Bu Tan of Walden International. In 2021, the firm was valued at $900 million when it expected to raise $85 million. OctoAI has reportedly raised more than $132 million since 2019.

Investors who backed the OctoAI startup include Tiger Global Management, Addition, Madrona Venture Group, and Amplify Partners.

OctoAI's page describes the company as "an efficient, customizable, reliable generative AI platform to build and run production applications at the best price and performance. OctoAI puts customers in control with end-to-end solutions for text and media generation, with the ability to run open-source models (e.g. Llama 3.1, SD3), custom models, or a mix of both. OctoAI private deployment, known as OctoStack, allows customers to run generative AI in their own environment, including any cloud platform, VPC, or on-premise, offering full control over data."

Who is Luis Ceze?

On his LinkedIn page, Luis Ceze writes that he is a computer systems architect who leads AI systems engineers at Nvidia. He researches at the intersection of computer systems architecture, programming systems, machine learning, and biology. His current research projects include efficient and resilient AI systems and hybrid molecular-electronic mechanisms.

After the OctoAI and Nvidia deal, Ceze expressed his happiness and said that he was 'very excited' to join Nvidia. He further said that "building OctoAI has been a fantastic journey, going from pioneering research on ML compilers at the University of Washington, to driving Apache TVM adoption, to building products valued by customers in a fast-moving industry. I am extremely proud of the technology and products we built, the customers we made successful, and especially proud of our team that partnered so well leading up to this great outcome. Building a team of world-class people across the AI stack and across business functions was definitely a highlight of my professional career so far."

What does Luis Ceze do currently?

Luis Ceze serves as Vice President of AI systems software at Nvidia. He is also a professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Ceze earlier served as the CEO of the OctoAI startup that used to sell tools to run and build generative AI models efficiently.

FAQs

1. What company did Nvidia acquire in 2024?
   Nvidia acquired a Seattle-based software startup called OctoAI in 2024.
2. How much did Nvidia pay for OctoAI?
   Nvidia reportedly offered $165 million to acquire OctoAI.
3. What role did Luis Ceze take on at Nvidia after the acquisition?
   Luis Ceze became the Vice President of AI systems software at Nvidia following the acquisition of OctoAI.