Nscale, a cloud infrastructure provider, has officially announced the acquisition of AI software startup Anyscale, co-founded by Romanian-born Ion Stoica, a professor in the United States. The transaction is valued at around $1.65 billion, as reported by Bloomberg News. Nscale has opted not to disclose specific financial details regarding the deal.
Ion Stoica, alongside Robert Nishihara (CEO) and Philipp Moritz (CTO), co-founded Anyscale, with Nishihara and Moritz being his doctoral students at the RISELab at the University of California, Berkeley.
About Ion Stoica
Ion Stoica, a computer science professor originally from Romania, has achieved billionaire status by launching four startups stemming from his research lab at UC Berkeley, with two valued at over one billion dollars. According to Forbes, Stoica’s net worth is estimated at approximately $5 billion.
Over nearly three decades of academic career in the U.S., Stoica has co-founded four companies, including Databricks and Anyscale, both of which began as open-source projects at the university. He also serves as the executive chairman of Databricks, which was valued at $134 billion by private investors in February.
Prior to Databricks, Stoica co-founded the video streaming startup Conviva. In an interview with Forbes last summer, he emphasized the importance of building impactful solutions rather than merely pursuing financial gain, stating, “If you are driven only by money, you take the company public through an IPO. That’s the easiest path. But it’s not about that; it’s about building something that matters.”
Stoica has been a professor at UC Berkeley since 2000 after earning his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in the late 1990s. He leads a lab funded primarily by technology companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, and IBM, with an annual budget exceeding $6 million.
As he mentioned to Forbes, “Deep down, I remain an academic. The reason I haven’t gone full-time into business is my students. Young people, in their formative years, sometimes don’t realize what is possible. They have this kind of belief, and that’s why you can achieve unexpected solutions.”
Completion of Anyscale Acquisition Expected This Year
Anyscale, headquartered in San Francisco, specializes in software that organizes and manages complex AI tasks, enabling them to run seamlessly across multiple computers simultaneously. Nscale anticipates that offering Anyscale’s software will help attract more clients. Anyscale will continue to operate under its own brand and serve its existing customers, according to the companies involved.
The entire Anyscale team, comprising approximately 200 individuals from the United States, Europe, and India, will join Nscale as part of this acquisition. The transaction is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year.
In its most recent quarter, Anyscale reported a remarkable 70% revenue growth compared to the previous quarter, as detailed in a blog post by its co-founders.
