Today, we are thrilled to announce a significant milestone in Storj's mission to redefine cloud computing. We have acquired Valdi, the leader in on-demand GPU computing. This strategic move gives Storj access to thousands of GPUs and positions Storj as the largest distributed cloud provider, the leading decentralized physical infrastructure provider, and the only distributed cloud provider to offer both enterprise grade storage and enterprise grade compute—all without building a single data center, or buying/powering/cooling its own equipment. This enables us to offer customers better and more complete offerings, globally, at a fraction of the cost and carbon footprint of traditional hyperscalers.
Why Valdi?
Valdi has been at the forefront of the AI revolution, providing high performance compute infrastructure (GPUs) both on-demand and reserved for AI workloads and data-intensive industries. The rapid adoption of AI technologies has created an unprecedented need for powerful computing resources, and Valdi’s growth has been fueled by this trend. Like Storj, Valdi pioneered a model of aggregating underutilized cloud computing resources. They focused on GPUs, while Storj focused on data storage. By integrating Valdi's global network of GPU resources with our distributed cloud storage, we can offer a comprehensive solution that meets the evolving needs of companies working on data innovations.
Of course, we are also thrilled to be adding the talented Valdi team to Storj.
Strong synergy
Both Storj and Valdi share a vision of responsible innovation by leveraging underutilized resources to deliver sustainable and cost-effective solutions. Our combined offering will enable businesses to access globally available, high-performance cloud resources without the traditional overhead. Imagine the possibilities when you can seamlessly scale AI workloads globally with both robust storage and powerful compute capabilities at your fingertips, achieving up to 90% cost savings and reduced carbon emissions relative to hyperscalers.
Key benefits of our joint offering
- Scalability: Both our storage and compute solutions are infinitely scalable, ensuring you can grow in use and geography without constraints.
- Cost-efficiency: More effective use of existing cloud resources means significantly lowerer cloud costs.
- Sustainability: Reduce your carbon footprint by leveraging distributed architectures.
- Performance: Get lightning-fast transfer speeds globally and perform analysis at the edge where the data is created.
- Security, durability, and availability: By leveraging distributed resources, neither we nor our customers are dependent on any one resource or organization, with no central points of failure.
- Democratizing access for customers: Until now, it has proven very difficult and expensive for all but the best funded and largest organizations to access the latest GPU processors. Valdi has pioneered a model that allows small and midsized companies, universities, non-profits, and others to access the latest and greatest technology, without prepayment or lengthy commitments. Combined with globally distributed storage that can move large files quickly anywhere on the planet, this means that anyone, anywhere can take advantage of spare GPU cycles around the globe.
- Technological and Market Complementarity. A large part of Storj’s customer base needs the kind of GPU and compute capabilities provided by Valdi and vice versa. AI workloads tend to be both compute and storage intensive–involving the creation and analysis of huge data sets. We see similar synergies among our go-to-market partners.
- Economically empowering providers: Storj and Valdi have both grown by forging strong partnerships with individuals and organizations who are looking to more sustainably monetize their spare resources. We believe that this combination will provide more opportunities for our communities to grow and prosper
Our commitment to responsible innovation
Both Valdi and Storj share a passion for digital sustainability and responsible innovation. Together with AdSignal we co-founded the Digital Sustainability Alliance (DSA) to advocate for technologies that advance environmental stewardship. This partnership strengthens our commitment to developing solutions that are not only powerful but also sustainable and ethical.
Looking ahead
This acquisition is not just about expanding our capabilities; it's about setting a new standard for what distributed cloud services can achieve. We are committed to optimizing our joint offerings to support rapid global data processing, cost and performance optimizations for our customers, and enabling providers to offer both storage and GPU compute services. Additionally, we will be integrating token payments, allowing customers and providers to transact using the STORJ token. With this acquisition, Storj becomes both the largest and the most full featured Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) provider. As we are already partnering with other leading providers (e.g. Akash, POKT, LivePeer) and others, we hope that this helps accelerate that industry as well.
When Storj started on the journey to build a new kind of distributed cloud computing company–we (like AWS 20 years earlier)–began with object storage. Now, we are integrating compute and, in partnership with Valdi and others, are looking to build a new (and better) kind of cloud.
Join us on this journey
Storj was created to build a new cloud for a new era of computing. Our strategic decision to join forces with Valdi is a testament to our commitment to innovation and sustainability.
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the cloud computing landscape. Follow us on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram to join the conversation and be part of this exciting journey.
Warm regards,
Ben Golub
CEO, Storj
