NVIDIA acquires Chinese GPU cloud startup Lepton AI: report

NVIDIA has acquired Chinese startup Lepton AI in a deal valued at several hundred million dollars, according to US tech media outlet The Information. NVIDIA’s acquisition of Lepton AI may be related to the development of its cloud and software business, which is still in its early stages and faces a market dominated by cloud giants such as Google Cloud, Microsoft, and AWS. Lepton AI currently has around 20 employees, and sources say that co-founders Jia Yangqing and Bai Junjie have both joined NVIDIA. Jia served as Alibaba’s Vice President of Technology from March 2019 until he left Alibaba Cloud in March 2023 to found Lepton AI, which focuses on renting NVIDIA GPU servers and developing cloud management software. [The Information, in Chinese]