Weka Accelerates AI Model Training

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According to a recent research report, the global AI data management market is estimated to grow 23% annually through to 2030 . The market was pegged at $25.53 billion in 2023. Campbell, California-based Weka is a fast growing company in the space.

Weka’s Offerings

Weka was founded in 2013 by Liran Zvibel, Maor BenDayan, and Omri Palmon. They had met each other while building the data storage startup XIV, which was acquired by IBM in 2007 . Over the next few years, the three realized that there was a need for a single platform that did away with the silo-based approach for data management. They wanted to build a platform that could meet the demands of compute hardware and large-scale, data-intensive workloads in distributed environments.

Together, they came up with the idea of Weka which has been built to deliver speed, simplicity, and scale. Its software-defined architecture supports next-generation workloads in virtually any location. It operates as a parallel file system that accelerates performance by spreading data tasks across multiple places at once. Over time, it has added capabilities that support the compute workloads required by AI and machine learning in environments spanning on-premises data centers, public clouds, and hybrid clouds.

Weka claims that its architecture helps accelerate AI model training by reducing the amount of time it takes to copy data across storage locations. Unlike traditional data pipelines that require multiple steps of copying data sets, Weka keeps training models constantly fed with data for quicker training . Today Weka has more than 300 of the world’s largest AI and GPU deployments running on its platform. Its customer base includes more than 300 brands of which 11 are part of the Fortune 50.

Weka’s Financials

Weka remains privately held and does not disclose its financials. It earns revenues by charging its customers a licensing fee for its platform. According to a recent report, the company had exceeded $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

It has raised $415 million in funding so far with investments from Generation Investment Management, NVIDIA, Atreides Management, 10D, Hitachi Ventures, Ibex Investors, Key1 Capital, Lumir Ventures, MoreTech Ventures, and Qualcomm Ventures. Its last round of funding was held in May this year when it raised $140 million at a valuation of $1.6 billion. In November 2022, Weka had raised $135 million at a valuation of $750 million.

Weka is not the only player in the space. It competes with other similar platforms like DataDirect, Pure Storage, NetApp, and Vast Data. Last year, Vast Data had raise $118 million at a valuation of $9.1 billion. While Vast Data does not disclose financials either, reports suggest that it was generating an annual recurring revenue of $200 million last year and has been cashflow positive.

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