Generative AI: Databricks to Acquire MosaicML for $1.3B – High Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC

San Francisco-based data and AI startup Databricks today announced a $1.3 billion deal to acquire generative AI platform MosaicML, whose large language models (MPT-7B and MPT-30B) have over 3.3 million downloads. The goal of the acquisition: to reduce the time and cost of training large language models for generative AI, the companies said.

Databricks, which had revenue of more than $1 billion in 2022, said its Lakehouse platform combined with MosaicMLs technology “will give customers a fast and easy way to maintain control, security and ownership over their valuable data.” without high costs”. According to MosaicML, automatic model training optimization provides training 2 to 7 times faster than standard approaches. “Combined with near-linear scaling of resources, multibillion-dollar models can be trained in hours, not days,” Databricks said. “With Databricks and MosaicML, LLM training and use will cost thousands of dollars, not millions.”

The companies said that once the transaction closes, which is expected during Databricks’ second quarter ending July 31, the entire MosaicML team is expected to join Databricks.

MosaicML, also based in San Francisco, launched in 2021, has 62 employees and has raised $64 million in investment capital, according to a Wall Street Journal article, which also reported that MosaicML will be offered as a standalone service belonging at Databricks.

Databricks, founded in 2013, has a private market valuation of $38 billion, following a $1.6 billion investment about two years ago, according to the Journal. Investors include Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, UC Investments and ClearBridge Investments.

The Journal reported that market research firm PitchBook Data estimates the global generative AI market will total $43 billion in 2023 and then grow to just under $100 billion by 2026, a CAGR of over 30%. Meanwhile, genAI attracted nearly $13 billion from investors from January to May of this year, up from $5 billion for all of 2022, according to PitchBook.

The goal of the acquisition is to offer companies more targeted and less expensive implementations of generative AI. The Journal article quotes Larry Pickett, chief information officer and digital lead at biopharmaceutical services company Syneos Health, “who said the current cost of training a model on specialized health data is estimated at $1 million to $2 millions. These types of “domain-specific” templates may be more useful for businesses than ChatGPT, because they have more terminology and industry know-how, analysts say. trained models, “instead of building on top of the entire body of data that OpenAI has.” Some of these models are already available in open source libraries like those offered by machine learning startup Hugging Face, he said.

But other AI and machine learning experts “say that the processing and synthesis power of large language models like the one that powers ChatGPT outpaces smaller models, which have powerful but ultimately limited capabilities in a specific area” , according to the Journal.

In today’s announcement, Databricks said, “The MosaicMLs platform will be supported, scaled and integrated over time to provide customers with a seamless unified platform where they can build, own and secure their Generative AI models. Databricks and MosaicML will give customers more choice in building their own models, training models with their unique data, and creating differentiating IPs for their businesses.”

Every organization should be able to benefit from the AI ​​revolution with more control over how their data is used. Databricks and MosaicML have an incredible opportunity to democratize AI and make Lakehouse the best place to build generative AI and LLMs, said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks. The shared vision of Databricks and MosaicML, rooted in transparency and a history of open source contributions, will deliver value to our customers as they navigate the greatest information revolution of our time.

At MosaicML, we believe in a world where everyone has the power to build and train their own models, imbued with their own opinions and viewpoints, and joining forces with Databricks will help us make that belief a reality, said Naveen Rao, co -founder and CEO, MosaicML. We started MosaicML to solve the difficult research and engineering problems needed to make education at scale more accessible to all. With the recent wave of generative AI, this mission has come under the spotlight. Together with Databricks, we will tip the balance in favor of the many, and we will do so as kindred spirits: researchers-turned-entrepreneurs who share a similar mission. We look forward to continuing this journey together with the AI ​​community.