Mitesh Agrawal, former COO of Nvidia partner Lambda Labs, has joined Positron, a startup building hardware for AI inference. Positron aims to compete with Nvidia in the rapidly growing AI hardware market.
Lambda Labs , a well-established Nvidia partner, has experienced a significant departure with the resignation of its Chief Operating Officer, Mitesh Agrawal. Agrawal has joined Positron , a relatively unknown company specializing in hardware development for the burgeoning AI industry. Positron focuses on building hardware for transformer model inference, the technology that powers chatbots like ChatGPT to understand and respond to user requests.
Agrawal's move comes as a surprise given his pivotal role in shaping Lambda into one of Silicon Valley's most prominent and financially successful startups. During its Series C funding round in February 2022, Lambda achieved a valuation of approximately $1.5 billion. Agrawal, while declining to disclose Positron's current valuation, stated that Lambda has since grown to over $2 billion. He joined Lambda in 2017, initially working on machines for image generation models. However, the company quickly shifted its focus under Agrawal's leadership, designing infrastructure for large-scale data centers and transitioning into cloud services. Lambda's current business model revolves around deploying cloud infrastructure to clients, renting out servers equipped with Nvidia's powerful graphics processing units (GPUs). They also provide the necessary software, including APIs for inference and machine learning libraries, catering to the diverse needs of their clients.Agrawal explained that his decision to join Positron is driven by the increasing demand for inference capabilities in AI models. He cited examples like ChatGPT, xAI's Grok, and OpenAI's o1, highlighting the exponential growth in computational requirements for running these sophisticated models. He sees Positron as uniquely positioned to address this challenge, developing hardware that excels in performance, energy efficiency, and affordability.Positron was founded in 2023 by Thomas Sohmers, whom Agrawal had previously met in 2015. Sohmers, who will assume the role of Chief Technology Officer at Positron, stated that the company aims to develop hardware that directly competes with Nvidia's offerings. Positron claims its hardware surpasses Nvidia's H100 and H200 GPUs - which were instrumental in the AI race before the release of their more powerful Blackwell chips - in key areas like performance, power consumption, and cost. While challenging a giant like Nvidia, currently the world's most valuable company, is a daunting task, Positron believes its focus on providing hardware specifically for transformer model inference will set it apart from the competition. Transformer models, which learn context and meaning from data to generate new data, are the driving force behind many popular generative AI applications. Unlike convolutional neural networks that dominated previous machine learning advancements, transformer models require significantly more memory. Sohmers recognized this opportunity and decided to capitalize on it.Agrawal expressed confidence in Positron's hardware, emphasizing its performance and energy efficiency. He also believes its compatibility with a wide range of transformer models will attract customers seeking alternatives to Nvidia. He pointed out that Nvidia's strong ecosystem in the AI world, especially its software network, has created a significant barrier for competitors.However, Positron, according to Agrawal, removes this friction by enabling companies to seamlessly run models trained on Nvidia GPUs on Positron's hardware without any compatibility issues. Agrawal views his transition from a well-established company like Lambda to a promising startup like Positron as an exciting challenge, allowing him to compete in a rapidly growing field
AI Hardware Positron Lambda Labs Nvidia Transformer Models Inference Startup
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