Nasdaq-listed US giant NetApp has completed its acquisition of Manchester AI firm PEAK AIO.
PEAK AIO was founded in Manchester by Mark Klarzynski and was designed to address some of the industry’s most demanding data-intensive computing challenges.
The company’s core innovation, a next-generation metadata architecture and high-performance parallel file system, was developed to solve one of the defining infrastructure challenges of the AI era: enabling shared storage to scale alongside the GPU clusters that power modern AI workloads.
The deal, for an undisclosed amount, has now secured regulatory approvals.
Investor Pembroke VCT plc, a London-listed venture capital trust, said it would generate a significant return for shareholders.
“NetApp and PEAK:AIO were built around the shared conviction that the AI era needs data infrastructure designed to scale to extraordinary levels,” said Mark Klarzynski, chief technology officer and founder at PEAK:AIO.
“With the acquisition by NetApp, we can bring our innovation together with the reach, expertise, and trusted customer relationships of a global data infrastructure leader. Together, we are well positioned to help define what comes next and deliver technology that makes managing data for the AI era more practical, efficient, and accessible.”
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Syam Nair, chief product officer at NetApp, added: “The AI factory is only as productive as its data pipeline. By combining NetApp’s unified storage with PEAK:AIO’s metadata architecture, we separate metadata from data so performance scales out with concurrency, and we do it with open standards rather than proprietary clients.
“Customers can run more AI workloads, on their existing infrastructure, with the security, resilience, and simplicity of enterprise data management.”
George Kurian, CEO at NetApp, said: “AI infrastructure is reaching unprecedented scale, demanding a new approach to storage built from the ground up.
“By combining PEAK:AIO’s expertise in metadata services and parallel namespace innovation with the proven scale, data management capabilities, and enterprise-grade services of the NetApp Platform, we are leapfrogging the market as we deliver our next-generation, zettabyte-scale architecture to support the growth of AI clouds and GPU-as-a-service providers.”