The still very young market for artificial intelligence computers is spawning interesting business models. On Wednesday, SambaNova Systems, the Palo Alto-based startup that has received almost half a billion dollars in venture capital money, announced general availability of its dedicated AI computer, the DataScale[1] and also announced an as-a-service offering where you can have the machine placed in your data center and rent its capacity for $10,000 a month.
"What this is, is a way for people to gain quick and easy access at an entry price of $10,000 per month, and consume DataScale product as a service," said Marshall Choy, Vice President of product at SambaNova, in an interview with ZDNet via video.
"I'll roll a rack, or many racks, into their data center, I'll own and manage and support the hardware for them, so they truly can just consume this product as a service offering." The managed service is called dataflow-as-a-service, a play on the fact the company emphasizes pitch that its hardware and software reroutes itself based on the flow of AI models put into the system.
The DataScale computer goes up against graphics chips by Nvidia that dominate training of neural networks.
Also: 'It's not just AI, this is a change in the entire computing industry,' says SambaNova CEO[2]
Like other startups Graphcore[3] and Cerebras Systems[4], SambaNova has taken a systems approach