Storj Combines Cloud Object Storage with GPU Computing with Valdi Acquisition – Blocks and Files

Cloud storage company Storj has acquired a high-performance, on-demand computing platform from Valdi with the aim of using it to power AI-related workloads for its customers.

Valdi aims to address the severe shortage of GPUs caused by the growth of the AI ​​market by making them available “instantly” in the cloud. With the acquisition of Storj, it claims to provide a complete distributed cloud solution with integrated storage and GPU availability.

Storj enables customers to leverage unused storage capacity in data centers in over 100 countries, while Valdi enables customers to leverage available GPU compute cycles in data centers worldwide.

“This combination is ideal because most AI workloads require significant GPU computing, storage, and moving large data sets,” Storj said.

Valdi says this makes it easy to spin up GPU clusters in flexible configurations “in just a few seconds,” and says it does so without any contracts and at “very reasonable prices.” Valdi’s network includes more than 16,000 GPUs worldwide. Institutions including CalTech and USC/ISI use the Valdi platform for their AI workloads.

Ben Golub, CEO of Storj, said: “Storj is building on a solid foundation of distributed object storage in the cloud today. The acquisition of Valdi extends the value of our distributed enterprise solutions by enabling a full stack cloud offering for our broad set of global customers.”

Storj claims to reduce cloud costs by up to 90 percent compared to traditional cloud providers, and also lowers carbon emissions by leveraging existing, unused hard drive capacity. Storj and Valdi, along with Ad Signal, co-founded the nonprofit Digital Sustainability Alliance (DSA) to promote sustainable computing technology.

“Our customers have significant storage needs for their AI workloads, so combining our organizations benefits customers and allows us to grow faster,” said Nikhil Jain, CEO of Valdi.

The value of the acquisition was not disclosed. Valdi was founded by Adam Zheng and Jain in 2022 and received an early-stage venture capital investment in November 2023. The lead investor was FMS Capital Partners, which took a minority stake in Valdi.

Last October, Storj announced that its revenue grew 226 percent year-over-year, with customers and partners including Toysmith, Acronis, Ad Signal, Valdi, Cribl, Livepeer, Bytenite, Cloudvice, Amove, and Kubecost contributing to the growth.