Nvidia has acquired Canadian AI startup CentML - The Logic

TORONTO — Chip giant Nvidia has acquired Canadian AI startup CentML, The Logic has learned.

CentML CEO Gennady Pekhimenko is now a senior director for AI software at Nvidia, while CTO Sam Wang and COO Akbar Nurlybayev have taken management positions at the chipmaker, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Nvidia also brought on at least 15 other engineers and two interns this month who previously worked at the startup, according to LinkedIn profile data.

A source with knowledge of the matter told The Logic that Nvidia had acquired Toronto-based CentML, its technology, employees and customers. They added that the acquisition was a significant outcome for CentML and its investors. The Logic granted the source anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deal.

Nvidia declined to comment.

CentML’s software slotted in between users’ AI models and the chips powering them, tapping under-used hardware capacity and employing other tricks to make the systems run better. The firm had raised a total of US$30.9 million in venture capital, according to PitchBook data. The company will cease operations and its AI-optimization services will no longer be available as of July 17, according to a message Nurlybayev sent customers earlier on June 17 that was posted in the company’s community Slack channel and on X.

CentML already had ties to Nvidia. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant participated in the startup’s US$27-million seed round in October 2023. In November 2024, CentML announced it had enrolled in Nvidia’s accelerator program, which gives firms discounts on hardware and access to technical resources. Other backers included Toronto-based Radical Ventures, which helped incubate the firm, as well as Google’s Gradient Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, and the venture arm of Canadian media conglomerate Thomson Reuters.

Pekhimenko, a computer science associate professor at the University of Toronto, co-founded CentML in March 2022 with his doctoral students Wang and Anand Jayarajan. Nurlybayev joined them that August. The startup was one of several companies promising to help clients run AI systems more efficiently and cheaply as demand for compute and the specialized chips that generate it ballooned. It developed its own compiler, which translates code for applications to a machine language that processors can understand. 

Not all of CentML’s staff are joining Nvidia. In a LinkedIn post last week, one CentML salesperson said his role and others had been eliminated in an “organizational restructuring.”

In early June, CentML dissolved its federal corporation and reincorporated under British Columbia law. Firms sometimes undertake that switch just before being acquired by foreign buyers as B.C. has no residency requirements for company directors. 

CentML sold subscriptions to its software, and also formed revenue-sharing agreements with cloud providers that bundled its technology into the services they sold to clients. As of November, the firm had 46 staff and was “getting good traction,” Pekhimenko said in an interview at the time. The source said CentML had built a technically-advanced platform and had been growing quickly prior to the acquisition, forming partnerships with several major tech firms including Nvidia.

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CentML’s exit comes the same month as Untether AI, a Toronto-based chip startup, shut down after selling its engineering teams to Nvidia’s chief GPU rival AMD. Toronto is a hub for teams writing software for hardware, including compilers. 

At Nvidia, CentML’s former engineers will be working on software. While it’s best known for its hardware, rivals say Nvidia’s software platform, Cuda, is what keeps it atop the AI chip market. The code lets developers easily run models on GPUs, and many have built it into their applications, making it harder for them to switch to different chips. 

While other hardware vendors are getting more competitive, “it would be naive to expect that Nvidia is not going to matter,” Pekhimenko said in November. He predicted the GPU giant would be ”one of the most important companies for the foreseeable future.”

CentML’s exit came in a busy month for the firm. On June 3, Pekhimenko helped ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in a ceremony to recognize firms on VC firm Madrona’s list of top private AI companies. CentML had also been scheduled to host a barbecue social on Monday as part of Toronto Tech Week, but the event appears to have been cancelled. The career page on the firm website listed over a dozen open positions as of Friday.