NetApp to acquire PEAK:AIO to boost AI infrastructure

NetApp has announced its intention to acquire PEAK:AIO, a Manchester-based software-defined storage company specializing in next-generation metadata architecture and high-performance parallel file systems. The acquisition is intended to accelerate NetApp’s AI infrastructure roadmap by addressing the scalability and performance limitations of traditional storage architectures when faced with AI workloads.

By integrating PEAK:AIO’s technology with NetApp ONTAP software, the company aims to create an architecture that disaggregates metadata from data. This approach allows metadata services to scale independently, supporting exabyte-scale environments and massively parallel workloads required by growing GPU clusters. NetApp CEO George Kurian stated that the move aims to provide high-performance shared storage that maintains resilience and security for hyperscale cloud AI.

Separately, NetApp is focusing on unified storage to reduce data management friction for AI, with upcoming industry discussions expected to highlight its intelligent data infrastructure and recent acquisition of DataPelago.