AMPD Ventures Inc said it has signed a deal with Variational AI Inc to increase the latter’s machine e-learning infrastructure hosted at AMPD’s DC1 sustainable data centre.
The deal will nearly double the machine learning capacity supplied by the AMPD AI Platform to Variational, the developer of Enki, an artificial intelligence-powered small molecule discovery service designed to help discover new molecules for pharma research, the company said.
“AMPD’s approach to solving these complex computing problems has been the main driver for Variational in deciding to not only adopt the platform but to now almost double our capacity,” said Variational AI co-founder and compute lead, Mehran Khodabandeh, in a statement.
“In 2020, AMPD was able to understand what we were trying to achieve and simply had the best solution on the market for our needs. And now, being a customer of AMPD for well over a year has only increased our confidence in their ability to deliver state-of-the-art solutions for machine learning. We are very happy to be increasing our footprint on the AMPD AI Platform,” he added.
In 2020, AMPD worked with world-leading GPU manufacturer NVIDIA to design the AMPD AI Platform in conjunction with Variational AI. By running several tests on different NVIDIA GPUs and in different configurations, AMPD was able to design the ideal platform from both a cost and performance perspective to meet the needs of high-intensity AI workloads, such as those of Variational.
The new deal signed with Variational is a monthly recurring revenue (MRR) contract for two years, commencing at the new service date based on the delivery of the service, AMPD said. This is on top of the existing MRR contract still in place with Variational AI, it added.
“Canada has been emerging as a global hub for artificial intelligence technologies, with over 150 AI/machine learning start-ups based in Vancouver alone, working across a range of application areas,” said Anthony Brown, CEO of AMPD.
“We look forward to addressing the needs of this sector with our GPU-based compute solutions,” he added.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com