San Jose-based NetApp, an intelligent data infrastructure company, has announced its “intent” to acquire Manchester-based PEAK:AIO, a pioneer in “next-generation metadata architecture and high-performance parallel file systems.”
The planned acquisition is expected to accelerate NetApp’s AI infrastructure roadmap by augmenting metadata services and parallel namespace innovation designed to help AI clouds scale shared storage alongside growing GPU clusters.
“As AI becomes embedded in every enterprise workload, organizations are confronting a new challenge: traditional storage architectures were not designed for the unprecedented scale, concurrency, and performance requirements of AI factories, AI clouds, and next-generation data-intensive applications,” said NetApp.
“NetApp is building an architecture that disaggregates metadata from data and enables metadata services to scale independently, creating a foundation for AI infrastructure capable of supporting trillions of files, exabyte-scale environments, and massively parallel workloads.
“The acquisition reinforces NetApp’s strategy to address the rapidly growing market for AI infrastructure. By combining PEAK:AIO’s specialized metadata innovations with NetApp ONTAP software, customers will benefit from a differentiated architecture that preserves the resilience, security, and operational maturity of ONTAP while introducing a new level of scalability for AI workloads.”
PEAK:AIO is deployed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, NHS AIDE, Oxford Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Liverpool, University of Strathclyde MediForge Hub, and Zoological Society of London.
NetApp CEO George Kurian said: “AI clouds need high-performance shared storage that can scale alongside growing GPU clusters while maintaining the resilience, security, and operational simplicity organizations depend on.
“With PEAK:AIO, we are delivering on our vision for a new generation of AI infrastructure that combines scalable metadata services with the proven foundation of ONTAP to help customers maximize infrastructure efficiency and support AI at hyperscale cloud.”
PEAK:AIO’s technology originated from collaborations with leading research institutions, including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University, and was designed to address some of the industry’s most demanding data-intensive computing challenges.
The planned integration will add specialized metadata services and parallel namespace innovation to NetApp’s ONTAP-based data architecture, while creating a clear evolution path for existing ONTAP customers.
Mark Klarzynski, Chief Technology Officer and Founder at PEAK:AIO, said: “NetApp and PEAK:AIO connected through the shared belief that the AI era demands a fundamentally new approach to data infrastructure.
“What excites us most about joining NetApp is the opportunity to pair our culture of innovation with the reach, scale, and customer trust of a global leader. Together with NetApp, we have an opportunity to help shape that future and deliver technologies that make managing data at a massive scale both practical and accessible.”