OpenAI acquires enterprise data startup Rockset to bolster real-time analytics

OpenAI has acquired enterprise analytics startup Rockset to leverage data more effectively across its suite of products and  “power our retrieval infrastructure across products,” the company said in a blog post on Friday.

The announcement comes just a day after OpenAI former chief scientist and ChatGPT-4 creator Ilya Sutskever announced the launch of his new AI startup, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), focused exclusively on developing safe and powerful superintelligent AI.

“AI has the opportunity to transform how people and organizations leverage their own data. That’s why we’ve acquired Rockset, a leading real-time analytics database that provides world-class data indexing and querying capabilities,” OpenAI stated in its blog post.

This marks OpenAI’s first acquisition where both the technology and team of the acquired company will be integrated. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Rockset has raised $105 million in funding to date.

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

Rockset CEO Venkat Venkataramani echoed this enthusiasm in a blog post on Rockset’s website. “Rockset will become part of OpenAI and power the retrieval infrastructure backing OpenAI’s product suite. We’ll be helping OpenAI solve the hard database problems that AI apps face at massive scale.”

According to Venkataramani, current Rockset customers will not see any immediate changes, and the transition will be gradual. Some members of Rockset’s team will also move over to OpenAI, ensuring a seamless integration.

Founded in 2016 by former Facebook engineers Venkat Venkataramani and Dhruba Borthakur, Rockset is known for its cloud-based search and analytics database. The startup offers a serverless search and analytics engine that allows developers and data scientists to build applications and dashboards directly from raw data without complex data pipelines or upfront data preparation.

Venkat Venkataramani, who served as an Engineering Director at Facebook, managed online data services for over 1.5 billion users. Co-founder and CTO Dhruba Borthakur was a database engineer at Facebook and the founding engineer of the RocksDB data store.

With this acquisition, OpenAI aims to significantly boost its data processing and analytics capabilities, ensuring its products remain at the forefront of AI innovation.

Founded in 2015 by Sam Altman and Elon Musk, OpenAI began as a nonprofit research organization dedicated to advancing safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, in 2020, it transitioned into a commercial entity, marking a pivotal change in its path. Despite facing internal turmoil in November, including Altman’s brief departure and subsequent return, OpenAI continues to lead the dynamic AI market, driven by the success of its flagship product, ChatGPT, launched in 2022.