OpenAI Nabs Rockset for Real-Time AI

OpenAI today announced the acquisition of Rockset, the developer of a relational database that allows users to run analytics and AI in real-time on fast-moving data. As part of the deal, Rockset customers will need to find a new platform.

Rockset was founded in 2016 by two Facebook engineers, Venkat Venkataramani and Dhruba Borthak, to tackle the need for an analytics database that can work on large amounts of streaming data, a technical problem that has bedeviled software engineers for decades.

They addressed the challenge by taking RocksDB, a fast key-value store, and building atop that a series of indexes that enable users to quickly run roll-ups, aggregates, and joins on the data. The company says its database allows data to be queried using SQL just milliseconds after being ingested. Customers include JetBlue, Allianz Direct, Seesaw, and Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

Rockset built its software in the cloud-native fashion, and offered it on the cloud as a serverless service. In recent months, the company added vector data types and vector search capabilities, enabling customers to use their database to serve data to large language models, such as ChatGPT.

“I’m excited to share that OpenAI has completed the acquisition of Rockset. We are thrilled to join the OpenAI team and bring our technology and expertise to building safe and beneficial AGI,” Rockset CEO Venkat Venkataramani, who is a Datanami 2022 Person to Watch, wrote in a Rockset blog post.

Venkat Venkataramani is a co-founder and the CEO of Rockset

“From the start, our vision at Rockset was to fundamentally transform the way data-driven applications were built,” he continued. “We developed our search and analytics database, taking full advantage of the cloud, to eliminate the complexity inherent in the data infrastructure needed for these apps.

“Fast forward 6 years, rapid advancements in LLMs are enabling a Cambrian explosion and numerous innovations across every industry, driving a preponderance of AI applications,” he continued. “While the nature of these applications has changed, the underlying infrastructure challenges have not. Advanced retrieval infrastructure like Rockset will make AI apps more powerful and useful. With this acquisition, what we’ve developed over the years will help make AI accessible to all in a safe and beneficial way.”

OpenAI acquired Rockset to speed up customer access to data, the company said in a blog post.

“Rockset enables users, developers and enterprises to better leverage their own data and access real-time information as they use AI products and build more intelligent applications,” the company said. “We will integrate Rockset’s technology to power our retrieval infrastructure across products, and members of Rockset’s world-class team will join OpenAI.”

“Rockset’s infrastructure empowers companies to transform their data into actionable intelligence. We’re excited to bring these benefits to our customers by integrating Rockset’s foundation into OpenAI products” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI COO.

Unfortunately for Rockset users, it looks like it’s the end of the road. In a FAQ posted by Rockset, the company says customer should look for a new home.

“[Y]ou will need to eventually move your workloads from Rockset onto a new platform,” Rockset wrote. “You will continue to have access to our support team who is available to assist as much as they can by providing the necessary resources, support and guidance during this transition.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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