NetApp plans to acquire PEAK:AIO to expand AI infrastructure capabilities

NetApp Inc (NASDAQ:NTAP), the data infrastructure company, said Friday it plans to acquire PEAK:AIO, a UK-based software company focused on high-performance storage and metadata architecture for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.

The planned acquisition is intended to strengthen NetApp’s AI infrastructure offering by adding PEAK:AIO’s metadata technology and parallel file architecture, which are designed to support large-scale AI systems.

The companies are targeting infrastructure that can support trillions of files, multi-exabyte deployments and highly parallel workloads as AI systems require greater storage capacity and faster access to data.

PEAK:AIO’s technology is designed to separate metadata, information that describes and organizes stored data, from the data itself, allowing metadata services to scale independently.

The planned combination would integrate PEAK:AIO’s technology with NetApp’s ONTAP software, which provides data management, security and resilience across enterprise storage environments.

NetApp said the architecture is designed to reduce data-related delays that can leave graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips widely used to train and run AI models, waiting for information.

PEAK:AIO’s platform supports parallel Network File System (NFS) access, allowing multiple computing processes to access shared data simultaneously for large-scale workloads.

The Manchester-based company developed its technology through collaborations with research institutions including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University.

PEAK:AIO’s platform is deployed at institutions including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Liverpool and the University of Strathclyde.

The acquisition remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, while NetApp did not disclose financial terms for the transaction.

The deal follows NetApp’s acquisition of DataPelago in July and JetStream Software in August as the company expands its data infrastructure portfolio for AI workloads.