In April, US AI chip giant Nvidia Corp. announced that it was acquiring Israeli AI infrastructure orchestration and management company Run:ai. Since then the acquisition stalled due to an investigation by the US antitrust regulator. But today the deal was closed after US and EU regulators gave their approval.
Nvidia will pay an estimated $800 million for Run:ai, of which the company's founders and employees will receive $200 million. Between the announcement of the deal in April and the closing of it over the past few days, Nvidia's share price rose over 70%. It is unlikely that the investors' returns have increased by the same percentage and it is possible that, as is customary in such deals that an arrangement was agreed that sets a range in the share's value, so that the value of the deal will not jump to the same extent. At the same time, the value of the retention plan for the entrepreneurs and employees, which was apparently given in Nvidia shares, has increased from about $100 million to nearly $200 in eight months, so they will benefit from the delay.
About 150 employees will join Nvidia's offices in Tel Aviv and Yokneam. Approval of the acquisition will allow Nvidia to expand the Israel development center as its main software development center outside the US. A few months ago, Nvidia acquired Israeli AI company Deci AI, which has also joined the company's expanded development center.
A retention bonus is usually given to employees and entrepreneurs to get them to work at the company for a certain number of years and not leave before then. Such compensation is given through a restricted stock unit (RSU), that is, a share that can be exercised only after a number of years, or that can be exercised in part at any predetermined time period.
In a blog post Run:ai founders Ronen Dar and Omri Geller wrote, "Today we conclude a chapter in the exceptional journey of Run:ai and are delighted to begin a new and exciting chapter with our officially joining Nvidia." Nvidia also welcomed completion of the deal but none of those involved referred to the lengthy investigation by US authorities that delayed the closing of the long-awaited deal and almost jeopardized Nvidia's expansion in Israel.
"Politico" website had revealed that in recent months the US Department of Justice was conducting an antitrust investigation into Nvidia's acquisition of the Israeli startup. Run:ai has developed a platform that allows more operations to be performed on Nvidia's graphics processors and saves the need to purchase more of its own processors. According to sources who spoke to "Politico", the regulator's concern was that Nvidia acquired the Israeli company in order to "suppress technology that could curb its main profit engine."
Nvidia, for its part, tried to prove that the acquisition would not harm the market and would not restrict use of Run:ai platform only to Nvidia customers. On the contrary, according to Run:ai's blog, it appears that Nvidia is trying to make the product accessible to as many users as possible outside of its ecosystem. Run:ai's platform will also be used by competing AI accelerators, including those of Intel and AMD, and it will be used not only by Nvidia's DGX cloud service customers, but also by customers interested in local (On-Prem) services or through external cloud providers such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on December 30, 2024
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