Red Hat Acquires Neural Magic to Boost Open Source AI Capabilities
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Red Hat has signed an agreement to acquire Neural Magic, a company specializing in software and algorithms that accelerate generative AI (gen AI) inference workloads, according to a press release from Red Hat.
The acquisition serves to further the company's goal of making AI workloads more accessible and efficient across hybrid cloud environments.
"AI workloads need to run wherever customer data lives across the hybrid cloud; this makes flexible, standardized and open platforms and tools a necessity, as they enable organizations to select the environments, resources and architectures that best align with their unique operational and data needs," said Matt Hicks, president and CEO of Red Hat.
Neural Magic is a company specializing in inference performance engineering, and its commitment to open source complement Red Hat's existing AI technology portfolio. The combined offerings aim to address challenges associated with deploying and scaling gen AI, including the increasing size of large language models (LLMs) and the need for significant computing power.
Red Hat plans to leverage Neural Magic's technology to further democratize access to AI through the open innovation of vLLM, a community-driven open source project for open model serving.
"Open source has proven time and again to drive innovation through the power of community collaboration," said Brian Stevens, CEO of Neural Magic. "At Neural Magic, we’ve assembled some of the industry’s top talent in AI performance engineering with a singular mission of building open, cross-platform, ultra-efficient LLM serving capabilities. Joining Red Hat is not only a cultural match, but will benefit companies large and small in their AI transformation journeys."
Red Hat's AI technology portfolio includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI), Red Hat OpenShift AI, and InstructLab. Neural Magic's technology leadership in vLLM will enhance Red Hat AI's ability to support LLM deployments across hybrid cloud environments.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory reviews.