Key Takeaways
- Barun Kar is the CEO and co-founder of Upscale AI, with over 25 years of experience in leading R&D organizations and a background in notable tech companies.
- Upscale AI is developing open-standard, full-stack turnkey solutions for AI networking infrastructure, focusing on ultra-low latency and high-performance networking.
- Upscale AI differentiates itself by providing flexible, scalable, and interoperable networking solutions built on open standards, moving away from proprietary systems.
Barun Kar is CEO of Upscale AI. He is also the co-founder of Auradine and previously served as COO. Barun has over 25 years of experience leading R&D organizations to deliver disruptive products and solutions, resulting in multi-billion-dollar revenue. Barun was on the founding team at Palo Alto Networks and served as the company’s Senior Vice President of Engineering where he spearheaded two acquisitions and led five post-merger integrations. Prior to that, Barun oversaw the entire Ethernet portfolio at Juniper Networks.
Tell us about your company
Upscale AI is developing open-standard, full-stack turnkey solutions for AI networking infrastructure. We’re redesigning the entire AI networking stack for ultra-low latency networking, offering next-level performance and scalability for AI training, inference, generative AI, edge computing, and cloud-scale deployments. Upscale AI just raised $100 million of funding for our seed round, so we look forward to using this funding to bring our solutions to market and define the future of scalable, interoperable AI networking.
What problems are you solving?
It’s becoming more challenging for network infrastructure to keep up with AI/ML model sizes, inferencing workloads, token generation rates, and frequent model tuning with real-time data. To meet today’s networking challenges, the industry needs scalable, high-performance networking infrastructure built on open standards. Upscale AI’s open standard solutions meet the latest bandwidth requirements and low latency needs of AI workloads, while also offering customers more scalability. Plus, Upscale AI is providing companies with much more flexibility and interoperability compared to the closed, proprietary solutions that dominate the market today.
What application areas are your strongest?
Upscale AI’s silicon, systems, and software are specifically optimized to meet AI requirements today and in the future. Our ultra-low latency and high bandwidth networking fabric will not only drive the best xPU performance, but will also offer a huge reduction in total cost of ownership at the data center level. Our unified NOS, which is based on SAI/SONiC open standards, makes it easy for companies to scale their infrastructure as needed and perform in-service network upgrades to maximize uptime. Additionally, our networking and rack scale solutions enable companies to host an array of AI compute without vendor lock-in.
What keeps your customers up at night?
Increasing network bandwidth demands have put a lot of pressure on infrastructure to deliver high bandwidth, low latency, and reliable interconnectivity. While you often hear about how powerful AI applications are now accessible to anyone with an internet connection, AI network infrastructure remains limited to companies with a lot of capital. Furthermore, even hyperscalers and AI neocloud providers with deep pockets are limited to closed, proprietary solutions for AI network infrastructure. These companies don’t like being locked into a closed ecosystem. Upscale AI is giving its customers a new level of flexibility with our portfolio that is built using UALink, Ultra Ethernet, SONiC, SAI, and other cutting-edge open source technologies and open standards.
What does the competitive landscape look like and how do you differentiate?
Today there is no established AI network player that is offering an alternative to proprietary solutions. AI networking innovation should not be locked into a closed ecosystem. We strongly believe at Upscale AI that open standards are the future and we’re working to democratize AI network infrastructure by pioneering open-standard networking technology. Our portfolio gives companies bring-your-own-compute flexibility to help realize the full potential of AI. A truly differentiated full-stack solution—engineered for AI-scale networking, vertically integrated from product to support, diversified for optionality, and built on open standards to power the next wave of AI infrastructure growth.
What new features/technology are you working on?
We’re working to bring to market full stack AI networking infrastructure, including robust silicon, systems, and software. Stay tuned for more updates on what’s coming out next.
How do customers normally engage with your company?
Upscale AI has a direct salesforce working with hyperscalers, neocloud providers, and other companies in the AI networking space. Prospective customers can reach out to our team via our website: https://upscaleai.com/.
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