VAST Data Founds Cosmos, A Tech Community With A Mission To Simplify & Accelerate AI Adoption, Exploration And Discovery

AUCKLAND – 2 October 2024 – VAST Data, the AI data platform company, today announced the launch of Cosmos, an initiative designed to transform how organisations build and advance AI, by creating a comprehensive and supportive environment to nurture innovation, collaboration, growth, and economic prosperity. This community is built of AI practitioners and for AI practitioners – as researchers, technology partners, service providers, and solutions integrators all join together to help democratise the benefits of AI.

Cosmos aims to streamline AI adoption for its members by offering a comprehensive, interconnected ecosystem that facilitates conversation, shares use cases, and provides learning opportunities through labs, vendor showcases, and general AI research news. Cosmos helps community members navigate available options and implement the most effective solutions for their unique needs.

Artificial intelligence has the ability to revolutionise business productivity. However, today it can be difficult to build an AI-enabled workforce. As new technologies and methodologies are developed, participating in Cosmos is an ideal way to stay informed and be supported on this journey. Cosmos is unlocking innovation by helping to revolutionise the way organisations develop, deploy, and utilise AI technologies from this point forward.

Composed of early participants including VAST Data, NVIDIA, xAI, Supermicro, Deloitte, WWT, Cisco, CoreWeave, Core42, NEA, Impetus, Run:AI, Dremio, and more, Cosmos is an AI community that serves to further AI progress by simplifying adoption and pioneering the next frontier of data-driven innovation.

“Today marks a monumental step forward in our journey to redefine the future of data and AI,” said Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data. “Since our inception, VAST Data has been dedicated to breaking down the barriers that have long confined the potential of data. With the VAST Data Platform at the centre of this comprehensive, interconnected AI ecosystem of technology leaders and AI practitioners, Cosmos will help accelerate discovery, empowering innovation, and enabling the transformation of entire industries.

The Cosmos community is designed to accelerate a future where data is a catalyst for change, revolutionising the way data is synthesised and operationalised by:

• Accelerating AI Development and Deployment: By providing a real-time communication and collaboration platform for practitioners, researchers, and vendors to exchange ideas and knowledge share, Cosmos will accelerate AI development and deployment. Through this new community, organisations can take advantage of new AI Labs that will unlock new insights from demonstrations of proven reference architectures from leading technology providers.
• Enabling Cross-Industry Collaboration: Assembling AI practitioners across every sector within a unified ecosystem, Cosmos brings forth an opportunity for members to learn and stay on top of trends and drive innovation by utilising efficient AI infrastructure solutions.
• Providing Direct Access to Expert Insights: The community will facilitate knowledge sharing by hosting exclusive sessions with industry insiders and AI experts. These interactive discussions allow participants to ask in-depth questions, receive tailored advice, and gain clarity on complex topics that are critical to their success.

NVIDIA is participating in the VAST-led Cosmos community to support and foster ecosystem collaboration, helping to simplify AI adoption and making it easier for organisations to gain valuable insight from their data.

Generative AI presents an unprecedented opportunity to transform industries and drive innovation globally,” said Kevin Deierling, Senior Vice President at NVIDIA. “By collaborating as a technology ecosystem, NVIDIA and our partners can empower organisations to accelerate the next wave of AI-powered breakthroughs.

Representing the agenda of foundation model builders and bringing model builders together with model users, xAI has also joined VAST as a founding member of Cosmos.

“xAI is guided by our mission to accelerate human scientific discovery and advance our collective understanding of the universe with advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity,” said a spokesperson at xAI. “It will take many insights to truly maximise the potential of the AI models training on the world’s data. We welcome all to the Cosmos, the first frontier for collaboration between AI model builders and users.”

Cosmos Members Across the Industry

“We’re in a new era. With the promise and the complexity of AI, data centres, both public and private, must be reimagined to meet the needs of these new AI workloads,” said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco. “The scale of this change will only be possible if we collaborate across the technology stack. Cisco is working with VAST, NVIDIA and others to build modular infrastructure that allows organisations to quickly deploy these AI workloads, including the networks to support them.”

“The potential for AI is incredibly huge,” said Vik Malyala, President and Managing Director EMEA, SVP, Technology and AI at Supermicro. “By working together and sharing our experiences, we can enhance efficiencies, accelerate insights, and ultimately make AI more powerful and safer through an open Cosmos community. Supermicro is committed to helping organisations realise this potential and bring the benefits of AI to different verticals, community, society, and the world.”

“At CoreWeave, we help customers push the limits of AI innovation by blending our industry expertise with our market-leading compute and AI infrastructure solutions,” said Mike Intrator, CEO and Co-founder of CoreWeave. “We are proud to be a part of Cosmos, which affords us the opportunity to help build a community that is centred around providing solutions that power the future of AI.”

“Our clients are increasing their investments in AI because they have seen strong early value from Generative AI,” said Stephen Brown, AI Factory Leader at Deloitte. “A strong data foundation is critical for successfully scaling AI and we look forward to collaborating with members of the Cosmos community to help clients extract tangible value from their GenAI initiatives.”

“Humans are at their best when they collaborate - offering up their passion, their competency and expertise from every corner of the world,” said Lila Tretikov, Partner, Head of AI Strategy at NEA. “We need a global community for AI that can bring together a similar set of values and share in how we shape AI globally for the benefit of all. I think Cosmos can become that forum for everyone to participate and learn to develop something new and share ideas that will break down the barriers we face today and tomorrow.”

“We’re excited for the launch of Cosmos, bringing together industry thought leaders who are moving the AI community forward,” said Sendur Sellakumar, CEO at Dremio. “Dremio is happy to be a key enabler by providing AI-ready data through our lakehouse platform, which unifies data across sources, enhances access and quality, and ensures robust protection while managing large datasets efficiently. Leveraging data-as-code capabilities, Dremio simplifies data preparation, helping customers harness their data for advanced AI applications.”

“We are thrilled to join the Cosmos community, where innovation and collaboration will converge to push the boundaries of AI and data technology,” said Rajeeva Gupta, CEO of Impetus Technologies. “Through our Impetus Innovation GenAI Labs and partnership with VAST Data, we’re committed to help companies build intelligent enterprises powered by modern data platforms and enterprise AI. Cosmos provides the ideal vehicle to foster best practices around building and scaling AI models to enable the next generation of enterprise-class data architectures for superior business outcomes.”

“Achieving the full potential of AI requires new forms of industry collaboration, new methods of fostering innovation and the sharing of business domain and technology disciplines,” said Mitch Ashley, Chief Technology Advisor, The Futurum Group. “Cosmos is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for industry and technology leaders to garner the once unimaginable benefits from AI, which would be unachievable if we go it alone. It’s incumbent upon us to take bold steps like Cosmos that can reshape our future solutions possible with AI.”

To learn more about Cosmos, register for the World Tour and sign up to join the Cosmos community.

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