Lambda, a cloud-based GPU startup, has obtained a $500 million loan with the help of lenders such as Macquarie Group, the specialised artificial intelligence cloud provider, using Nvidia’s highly sought-after processors as collateral.
Mitesh Agrawal, Lambda COO, confirmed the financing in a press release seen by News.ng on Friday.
As contained in the news release, the funding, led by Macquarie Group and including Industrial Development capital, came before Lambda’s $320 million Series C capital round in February 2024.
Founded in 1969, Macquarie Group Limited (Macquarie) is a global provider of financial services, offering its clients access to markets, commodity trading, renewable energy development, leasing and asset financing, wealth management, retail and business banking, asset management, and specialised advice in addition to capital and principal investment.
Lambda bills itself as an AI computing platform that was founded in 2012 and supports developers throughout the whole AI development lifecycle. AI engineers can use it to safely develop, test, and implement AI solutions at a large scale.
Its product line includes both cloud-hosted GPUs and GPU hardware that is installed on-premises.
Lambda Cloud has almost 100,000 registered users. In order to provide generative AI developers with a full stack, the company also offers NVIDIA AI Enterprise.
The funding according to the report will enable the business to finance the on-demand cloud deployments of NVIDIA GPUs for the purpose of training, optimising, and inferencing generative AI models in Lambda Cloud by AI developers.
“This first-of-its-kind financing vehicle unlocks a new way to fund the deployment of tens of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs.
“Lambda’s mission is to continue to build the best AI compute platform in the world, and this structure lets our AI startup customers build the next generation of iconic companies on top of our cloud without the barrier of expensive multi-year contracts,” said Agrawal.
Similarly, we reported that Flipkart’s co-founder, Sachin Bansal, is seeking fresh capital for his new startup, Indian fintech Navi.
Multiple sources privy to the matter claimed that Bansal is talking to investors to raise an external round of funding at a valuation of around $2 billion.