British AI neocloud Nscale is acquiring software startup Anyscale for $1.65 billion, according to a Bloomberg report citing an anonymous source, as the company looks to capture more of its customers’ AI spending.
Anyscale, built by the team behind the open-source Ray distributed programming framework, originally focused on high-performance computing before pivoting toward AI workload scaling following the 2022 launch of GPT-3. Its platform, built around Ray, now supports training and serving large language models, data curation, inferencing, and reinforcement learning through developer tools and orchestration software.
The acquisition extends Nscale’s vertical strategy, which already spans energy, data centers, and orchestration software, adding workload management and scaling capabilities. Anyscale said in a statement that combining its software layer with Nscale’s infrastructure would allow tighter co-design than either company could achieve independently.
Nscale raised $2 billion in a March Series C round that valued the company at $14.6 billion, with backers including Nvidia, Nokia, Blue Owl, Dell, and Aker. It has since secured compute and data center partnerships with Microsoft, British Telecom, and Nordcraft. Anyscale, valued at $1.38 billion in a 2022 funding round, reported 70% quarter-over-quarter revenue growth most recently.
Nscale said Anyscale will keep operating under its own brand and retain its existing customers, with its roughly 200 employees joining Nscale.
