On the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence and supercomputing, Inflection AI is making big strides. The up-and-coming tech start-up, known for its Inflection-1 AI model, has announced a hefty investment in a staggering new AI supercomputer. The impressive machine comes equipped with 22,000 NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs, valued at approximately $40,000 each, amounting to an investment of roughly $880 million.
The Silicon Valley-based firm has made its mark on the tech landscape with its ambition to democratize AI, aiming to create a “personal AI for everyone.” The Inflection-1 AI model, a cornerstone of the company’s offering, is particularly recognized for its robust performance on tasks that require common sense reasoning, powering applications like their Pi chatbot. However, it’s yet to match up to heavyweights like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s LaMDA models.
Despite this, Inflection AI has garnered attention and investor confidence, raising $1.5 billion to date and boasting a valuation of $4 billion. The company’s latest fundraising round just a week ago contributed a substantial $1.3 billion to their coffers. This funding will support the significant investment into the newly announced AI supercomputer.
Inflection’s AI supercomputer is designed to accelerate the development of their AI model, with its 22,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs being a standout feature. Given the high demand and current scarcity of the H100 GPUs, acquiring such a large number of units is a feat in itself. Speculation suggests that NVIDIA, currently eyeing an investment in Inflection AI, may have assisted in securing the large volume of GPUs.
The supercomputer’s infrastructure includes 700 four-node racks of Intel Xeon CPUs, a configuration set to provide the computational horsepower necessary to drive significant advancements in the Inflection-1 model. This setup, which will consume a substantial 31 Mega-Watts of power, is expected to place Inflection AI’s supercomputer among the largest in the industry, right on the heels of AMD’s Frontier.
The current leaders in AI and supercomputing, Microsoft and Google, hold an overwhelming advantage in terms of computational power. As such, while Inflection’s supercomputer represents a significant step forward for the start-up, it still pales in comparison. Nevertheless, the investment in such a cutting-edge supercomputer demonstrates Inflection AI’s commitment to advancing their AI capabilities, particularly in the realm of coding tasks.
It’s always heartening to see independent start-ups like Inflection AI pushing boundaries in a space dominated by tech giants. Their venture may not topple the likes of Google or Microsoft from their pedestals yet, but it is a bold move, one that will undoubtedly drive the company, and potentially the industry, towards new horizons of AI development.
