Akamai Technologies is teaming up with Vast Data to speed up AI inferencing workloads.
The companies will be combining Akamai's distributed platform with Vast Data's technology for data-intensive computing to speed up inference workloads.
This will enable distributed customers to integrate data with better local response time and localization for distributed inference, as opposed to the centralized inference processing offered by hyperscalers.
"With this agreement, Akamai and Vast Data will deliver next-generation AI infrastructure that combines hyperscale performance, security, and efficiency to meet the growing demands of enterprise AI workloads, closer to the digital touchpoint," said Jeff Denworth, co-founder of Vast Data. "Together, we are providing organizations with an AI-ready data platform that ensures seamless scalability, intelligent automation, and enterprise-grade security for the most demanding AI and inference applications."
Akamai has a significant Edge footprint, with servers located in more than 700 cities with 4,300 points of presence.
In February of this year, Akamai launched a managed container service which enables customers to run workloads using Akamai's full-stack cloud computing infrastructure including GPUs and VPUs, object storage, managed database service, and network services from locations closer to end users.
Akamai was previously known as a CDN company, but has since pivoted to focus on cloud and security offerings. Despite this, the company is still expanding its CDN segment, having acquired customer contracts from bankrupt CDN firm Edgio in 2024, and those of Lumen and StackPath after they both quit the CDN business in 2023.
Vast Data is an AI data platform. In March 2024, the company launched an AI architecture based on Nvidia BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU) technology. The company has signed partnerships with the likes of CoreWeave, Crusoe, and GMI Cloud.
